1 


LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



Qunn c \ c ]2&33 c ] 

* 
















































































% 


















































' • ■ 















. 



































I * 














* 


i 
















. 











. 









































































































Now a Great Steam Shovel Was Eating Its Way 
Through the Hill Night and Day. [Page 168 ] 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


BY 

CHARLES PIERCE BURTON 

il 

Author of “ The Boys of Bob’s Hill,” “The Bob’s Cave Boys,” 
“The Bob’s Hill Braves,” “The Boy Scouts of Bob’s 
Hill,” “Camp Bob’s Hill,” “Raven Patrol 
of Bob’s Hill” 


With Illustrations by 
GORDON GRANT 



NEW YORK 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
l 9 l 9 



Copyright, igig, 

BY 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 



laia 


Z£br ©utnn & Sobtn Company 

BOOK MANUFACTURERS 
RAHWAY N E,W JERSEY 


©Cl. A5 2 9 7 8 2 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 

I. A Hungry Monster i 

II. Camp Number One 16 

III. James Ascalon Hurley 28 

IV. Giant Firecrackers 39 

V. Getting Ready for War 50 

VI. “Old Sneeze-Twice ” 61 

VII. The Hidden Hut 77 

VIII. Bill Writes a Letter 85 

IX. A Gas Attack 93 

X. Bob Inspects the Work 109 

XI. A Farmer with Soft Hands 122 

XII. The Mysterious Mr. Uhlmann .... 132 

XIII. “ Sweet Land of Liberty ” 144 

XIV. The Plotters 153 

XV. Bill Makes a Discovery 166 

XVI. Face to Face 182 

XVII. Game to the Limit 196 

XVIII. The Second Water Tank 208 

XIX. Laying the Steel 218 

XX. Uhlmann Does His “Planting” . . . .231 

XXI. The Boys “ Listen-In ” 24x5 

XXII. Fourth of July 251 

XXIII. The Last Spike 263 










•• 




•' $ 




















. * 

















































ILLUSTRATIONS 


Now a Great Steam Shovel Was Eating Its Way 

Through the Hill Night and Day [p. 168] Frontispiece 

FACING 

PAGE 

As He Spoke the Man Pulled a Revolver and Fired in 


the General Direction Bill Was Traveling . . 78 
“What Kind of a Machine Do You Call That?” . . 140 
“ Throw up Your Hands 1 ” 256 





























































































































* 




































































































































































































































THE TRAIL MAKERS 


CHAPTER I 

A HUNGRY MONSTER 

“ Chug-a-chug-a-chug-a-chug-a-chug ” 

The great dipper of a steamshovel sank its 
teeth into a high bank of earth, burrowed there 
for a moment; then swung up and out to the 
waiting cars. 

The monster earth-moving machine was eating 
its way through one of the hills which rib Western 
Tennessee — clay for the first thirty feet and rock 
below. 

Through the deep cut thus bitten out, a railroad 
was to be laid. Upon its completion those hills, in 
the midst of a wilderness, would echo for the first 
time to the shrieks and snorts of a locomotive. 

Two men stood watching the hungry giant at 
its task. One, about twenty-eight years of age, 
wore leather leggins, which, taken in connection 
with his surroundings, showed him to be a civil 
engineer. He was, in fact, overseeing the work of 


i 


2 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


construction for the railroad company. The other, 
older, keen of eye but lacking the lithe, strong 
frame of his younger companion, at first glance 
might have been thought a successful business man 
from the city, curious to see a railroad in the mak- 
ing. In reality he was the young man’s chief, a 
noted engineer, who carried whole railroads around 
in his brain and occasionally ran down from his 
city office to see how work on this one was get- 
ting on. 

The younger engineer was explaining to his 
chief what had been done and what remained to 
be done. He spoke in the soft accent of the South, 
a joy to hear, but so difficult to put on paper that 
it may as well be imagined as described. 

“ Do you know, suh? ” he was saying. “ When- 
ever I see a steamshovel at wo’k, it seems right 
sma’t human.” 

But a real “human,” if that human happened to 
be an American boy, would have been told to take 
smaller mouthfuls, instead of being urged to 
greater efforts. 

Imagine, if you can, a mouthful of pie — blue- 
berry pie, if you please — four feet long, three and a 
half feet wide and nearly six feet thick, dripping 
with juice and lusciousness. That is what the 
steamshovel was doing, three cubic yards at every 


A HUNGRY MONSTER 


3 

mouthful; biting into a hillside, however, instead 
of into pie. And that was only a small shovel com- 
pared with some. There are giant machines which 
bite off eight cubic yards at a mouthful — a cube of 
soil, measuring six feet long, six feet wide, six feet 
in thickness, and weighing some fifteen tons. 

To see a machine like that at work is a wonderful 
sight and “ right smart human,” as the engineer 
said. At least, so thought a young lad who stood 
at the top of the cut, looking down at the monster 
eating there with such a ravenous appetite. So 
intently was the boy watching the work of load- 
ing the dump train that he thought of nothing 
else. 

“ Keep away from the edge, Bob,” cautioned the 
“ shovel-runner,” as the dipper swung back for 
another load. 

The boy nodded and started to step out of dan- 
ger, but the warning had come too late. The turl 
on which he was standing had been undermined 
*by the shovel. At that moment it cracked under 
Bob’s weight, and down he plunged to the bottom, 
— turf and boy and dirt, mingled in hopeless con- 
fusion. 

Shouts of alarm came from the men at work on 
and around the shovel, for the boy had fallen 
directly in the path of the descending dipper, which 


4 THE TRAIL MAKERS 

weighed two tons or more. Should it strike him, 

the lad would be crushed to death. 

With a cry of horror, the young engineer made a 
rush for the spot, although knowing that he could 
not get there in time. There was only one person 
in the world who could save Bob Vreeland at that 
critical moment. The shovel-runner stood inside 
the cab which housed the machinery of the shovel, 
directing the movements of the great boom which 
swung the dipper. His hands grasped the levers 
which controlled the monster. Keen of eye, alert, 
“ on the job” every minute, Jack Shumway had 
seen the boy fall and realized that only swift 
action on his part could save him from death. 

A quick movement of his arm, and the heavy 
mass of steel, shaking its huge jaws as if impatient 
at the interruption, stopped, and hung there not 
six feet above the struggling boy. 

An instant later the engineer reached the place 
where the lad was trying to regain his footing. It 
was but the work of a second to drag him from 
under the dipper and set him on his feet. 

“ No harm done, Jack,” called Bob to his friend, 
the shovel-runner; then smiled his thanks up 
into the engineer’s face. “ I’ll know better next 
time.” 

“ Chug-a-cnug-a-chug-a-chug 


sputtered the 


A HUNGRY MONSTER 


5 


big shovel once more, sending up black clouds of 
smoke, while Bob limped toward a group of tents 
and shanties, known as Camp No. i, which stood 
not far away. He was not hurt much, but it was 
almost dinner time and he wanted to be close at 
hand when the cook’s helper should come out of 
a certain rough-board building and pound a trian- 
gle gong, which hung outside the door, as a wel- 
come signal to the men. 

Robert Vreeland, Jr., or Bob, as he was known 
to his friends, lived in a small town in central Illi- 
nois. His father, Robert Vreeland, Sr., was what 
is called an earth-moving contractor — a builder of 
railroads. 

When Bob first found out that a railroad had to 
be built by somebody before it could be operated, 
it was a new idea to him. He liked to ride on the 
cars. He enjoyed standing at a certain crossing 
while an approaching train, which looked like a 
speck in the distance, grew larger and larger, and 
finally roared by with a rush of wind and burst of 
speed. 

“ That is one of the greatest sights in the 
world,” his father had told him ; and Bob thought 
so too, although he had not seen many of the 
world’s great sights. Like most people, however, 
he never had thought much about how the railroad 


6 THE TRAIL MAKERS 

happened to be there for him to look at and ride 
upon. 

“ Railroads don’t grow like Topsy,” his father 
laughed, when talking to Bob one day in the early 
spring. “ Some folks seem to think they do and 
all that is necessary is to start one running; but 
the fact remains that railroads first have to be built 
and it takes a lot of money and hard work to build 
one, to say nothing about keeping it going after it 
has been built.” 

“ How do you build them? ” questioned Bob. 

“ Ask me something easy. It has taken me 
twenty years to learn how and even now I find out 
something new every day, this year especially.” 

“ When will school be out for the spring vaca- 
tion?” he asked, as a thought struck him. 

Bob did not have to look at the calendar to 
answer that question. He had been counting the 
days for more than a month. 

“ How would you like to spend your vacation 
down on the work and see for yourself how they 
are built? ” 

“ Great! ” shouted the boy. 

He was too busy to say anything more. He 
threw himself forward on his hands and kicked his 
heels high in the air. 

His father grabbed up a piece of board and pad- 


A HUNGRY MONSTER 


7 

died him good-naturedly; then marched him off in 
triumph. They were great chums, these two, as 
father and son ought to be. 

“ I judge from your actions that you are 
willing? ” 

“ Betcher life I am!” 

“ All right, son. Let’s go in and talk it over with 
your mother. Maybe you will be able to help me 
some, Bob, in addition to having a good time — 
enough to earn a little spending money, although 
there is not much chance to spend money in a rail- 
road camp. I need all the help I can get. The 
labor situation was bad enough before, but with 
our own country drifting into the war, I don’t know 
what we are going to do.” 

“ Can’t you get men enough? ” 

“ I manage to keep going, but labor is becoming 
more scarce every day, and wages higher. The 
war in Europe has drained this country of thou- 
sands of foreign laborers who have gone back 
home to fight, and there are no others coming to 
take their places. In addition, they have been 
combing the country for engineers, quarry men, 
and men from every department of railroad and 
road work. They need them in France. Worse 
than that, as I told you, the United States is drift- 
ing into the war as fast as it can. We’ll get into 


8 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


it, as sure as preaching, and mighty soon, to my 
way of thinking. There is no telling what will 
happen then. What do you think about it? ” 

Mr. Vreeland was in the habit of talking things 
over with his young son, sharing his views when 
they seemed right and pointing out the error when 
wrong. He believed that a boy should know what 
is going on in the world, and why, and should be 
encouraged to think for himself. 

“ I am going to help all I can, that is what I 
think/* Bob told him. “ I am a Boy Scout, and 
that is what Boy Scouts are for. I don’t know, 
much about building railroads but there will be 
something which I can do. I can run errands, 
anyhow.” 

“ It’s a bargain then,” said the contractor, “ that 
is, if your mother does not object, and I am sure 
she will not. While you are helping and playing, 
you will be learning some things which school 
can’t teach. I only wish you were ten years older. 
Bob, and twins, at that.” 

“ Haven’t you work enough for two boys? ” Bob 
asked, after his mother had given smiling consent 
to the plan. “ I’d like to take Bill Wilson along. 
You said you wished I was twins; that would be 
the next thing to it.” 

“ It would come closer to being triplets,” laughed 


A HUNGRY MONSTER 


9 


the contractor. “ Besides I said, ‘ and ten years 
older/ I am afraid that two boys wouldn’t get 
much work done. You’d have so much playing 
and talking to do. Then, again, we are short of 
shanties and you might have to sleep in a tent and 
go fishing a good deal to help feed the men. That 
would be a bad situation. Now, if it were not for 
that tent business and the fishing ” 

With a joyous shout Bob sprang into his father’s 
arms and gave him a quick hug; then shot through 
the doorway. 

“ I am going over to tell Bill,” he called, as he 
passed out of sight. 

Mr. Vreeland looked at his wife and laughed. 
“It is a little more than I bargained for,” he said. 
“ Neither one of them will earn his salt, but they 
will have some great experience and will be com- 
pany for each other and for me. This railroad- 
building game keeps me away from home more 
than I like.” 

“ Bill ” had been spending the winter with his 
aunt, who lived not far from the Vreeland home, 
and the two boys had become warm friends. His 
folks, Massachusetts people, who long had wanted 
to spend a winter in California, had chosen the 
winter of 1916-1917 for their outing. The serious 
problem of “ what to do with Willie ” in the mean- 


10 THE TRAIL MAKERS 

time, had been solved, greatly to that young man’s 
delight, by sending him out to Aunt Martha Car- 
gill’s in Illinois at the beginning of the school year, 
where he could continue his studies in a good 
school under the watchful care of his mother's 
sister. 

Bob was a chunky, sturdy lad with a thoughtful 
face, cheeks as red as apples, and a good nature 
which it seemed as if nothing could disturb. Bill 
was more slender and the more active of the two. 
He was good-natured also, but there was a limit to 
what he would stand, as some of his mates had 
found out. 

Bob was what is called mechanical. He liked to 
make things and knew how to make things. In 
some way he had obtained blue prints of a loco- 
motive and spent hours studying out the different 
valves, pipes and rods. Bob would rather fuss with 
a steam engine any time than play ball, which was 
unusual in a boy and made his folks wonder what 
was going on back of those bright eyes. 

Bill was all boy, from the top of his head to 
the soles of his feet. Probably, if the truth were 
known, he would rather have played ball than eat, 
but he loved and admired his new friend so much 
that when Bob wanted to play with an engine that 
seemed quite the thing to do. 


A HUNGRY MONSTER 


ii 


Soon after his arrival the two boys had rigged up 
a steam generator in the Vreeland back yard. Not 
having a pump, in order to get the needed pressure 
they had fastened a keg of water in the crotch of 
an apple tree, with pipes leading down to a coil in 
a furnace, which they had built below with some 
old bricks from the alley. Saturdays, and after 
school at night, until the weather became too cold, 
they spent happy hours at this play. 

One day while poring over a pile of catalogues 
which Bob had collected at the expense of some of 
Chicago's enterprising business men, they came 
across the picture of a wonderful brass whistle, 
which would make an unearthly screeching. It 
took a long time to save up money enough to buy 
it, but at last a package came by express, which 
when opened was found to contain the longed-for 
siren. When they were able to get up enough 
steam to sound this whistle, the boys were proud 
and happy. The neighbors were not so happy, but 
neighbors do not always understand. 

One Saturday, after a great deal of hard work, 
to which they probably would have objected very 
much if they had been asked to do it by their 
folks, they managed to nail a long mast to the 
ridge-pole of the Vreeland barn, which was used 
as a garage. The mast was so rigged with cords 


12 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


that a lighted lantern could be pulled to the top of 
the pole at night. That was a crowning joy, for 
a neighbor, whose eyesight had begun to fail, 
thought he had discovered a new star when he saw 
the light for the first time, and hurried into the 
house in great excitement to get his field glass. 

Both were Boy Scouts and very patriotic. Al- 
ready at the outbreak of the war in Europe, Bob 
had made some remarkable looking drawings of a 
submarine, calculated to sink a whole enemy navy 
on sight, and these, at his father’s suggestion, given 
with twinkling eyes but sober face, had been sent 
to a Cabinet official, wdiom Mr. Vreeland happened 
to know. Some time afterward a Government en- 
velope, addressed to “Mr. Robert Vreeland, Jr.,” 
arrived at the contractor’s house. It contained a 
letter formally thanking the young inventor for his 
submarine drawings, w r hich seemed to be very com- 
plete, “ lacking nothing but a front porch.” 

With cheeks blazing like the new star above the 
barn, Bob burst into the Cargill yard and found his 
friend playing with his ball. 

“ Bill,” he shouted, “ what do you know about 
it? Where do you think we are going? ” 

“ Crazy, I shouldn’t wonder,” said Bill, throwing 
Bob the ball. “Anyhow, one of us is. You can 
have two guesses.” 


A HUNGRY MONSTER 


13 


“ Crazy nothing! Father is going to take us 
South and let us help him build a railroad. Only, 
he says, we’ll have to sleep in a tent and go fish- 
ing. Ain’t it terrible? ” 

“Great snakes! I couldn’t stand that,” grinned 
Bill. “ Break it to me gently, can’t you? ” 

“ What do you say; will you go? ” 

“Will a duck swim? You bet I’ll go if Aunt 
Martha will let me, and I ’most know she will.” 

It didn’t take long to get the consent of Mrs. 
Cargill. She knew that “ Willie would be in good 
hands,” and his absence for a short time would be 
something of a relief to that good lady, who wasn’t 
used to boys. 

“ I think it is a real opportunity,” she said, with 
growing enthusiasm, “ but, Robert, your father 
must promise to make Willie work. That is part 
of the bargain. It costs money to feed a healthy 
boy these days, and Willie is a hearty eater. I 
don’t know just what they do in construction 
camps but surely there is some suitable work for 
a husky boy, who is so full of energy that he can 
not keep still. I actually am afraid of the police 
sometimes, he makes so much noise.” 

“ I have learned to run a car,” declared Bill, 
proudly. 

“ I guess they have something to do in a rail- 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


14 

road camp besides riding around in automobiles/’ 

“ It isn’t that, Mrs. Cargill,” said Bob, to whom 
Bill’s words had given an idea. “ Dad has an old 
car at the camp. He drives it himself whenever 
he wants to go from one part of the work to an- 
other. The railroad stretches over a good many 
miles, you know. But I’ll bet they have to send to 
town every day for something, and Bill and I could 
do that. It would save sending a man and ought 
to help a lot besides being fun.” 

The question of their going having been settled 
to their delight, the two lads sat down on the door- 
step, in the warm spring sunshine, to make their 
plans, and that, as every boy knows, is a great part 
of the fun, whether it be planning for Christmas, 
Fourth of July, a vacation, or just a day’s fishing. 

“ Bill,” said Bob, after they had talked several 
minutes, “ we are going to have the time of our 
young lives, and don’t you forget it; only the vaca- 
tion will be too short. Dad told me that there 
were several camps. When we get tired of one, 
maybe he’ll let us go to another.” 

“ No danger of our getting tired. Will we have 
time to go fishing? ” 

“ Sure thing. Take your fishing tackle with you. 
Dad says he wants us to go fishing to help pay for 
our board.” 


A HUNGRY MONSTER 


15 


“How do they build railroads, anyhow?’* 

“ Search me. But betcher life I am going to find 
out. Maybe I will build railroads like Dad when 
I grow up; it’s time that I was learning something 
about it.” 

It had seemed hard to wait for school to close, 
but the time passed quickly, after all, and the first 
day of vacation found the two friends on a train, 
speeding southward. 


CHAPTER II 


CAMP NUMBER ONE 

“ Camp No. i,” where Bob and Bill were to 
spend the next few weeks, was just an ordinary 
construction camp. There are thousands of such 
camps scattered over the country every summer, 
and many during the winter, particularly in the 
South where the winters are short and mild. 

Few people know anything about them or about 
the work they are doing. Once in a while a group 
of boys, tramping across the fields in search of 
those joys which are known only to boyhood, may 
come upon a cluster of tents far from town, and 
wonder what it all is about. Occasionally, auto- 
mobilists in their journeys about the country may 
glimpse the canvas, or shanties, of some outlying 
camp by the roadside. But for the most part the 
hardy men who dwell in these tented places do 
their work alone. The outside world sees only the 
results long afterward. 

It is a great work which they are doing. A rail- 
road is built to open up a new section of the coun- 
try. A county road is improved and laid with a 
16 


CAMP NUMBER ONE 17 

hard surface of macadam, concrete, or brick. 
Canals and irrigating ditches are dug in order that 
the dry plains of the far West can be watered and 
made to grow crops. Great banks of earth, called 
levees, are piled up along the Mississippi River to 
keep the “ Father of Waters ” from going on a tear 
through adjoining plantations, when he gets full. 
A swift-flowing stream is dammed with a massive 
wall of concrete, or earth, stone-faced, that there 
may be power for busy factories, or water for dis- 
tant cities. A tunnel is bored through some 
mountain that stands in the way of progress. 

By such work men continually are reshaping the 
earth’s surface to suit their own convenience and 
purposes. God has used many tools in His mighty 
task of creation — the slow-moving glacier, the 
flowing stream — but greatest of all such tools is 
man himself, and the countless machines which 
man has made to help him in his work. 

Glaciers and rivers, however, do not have to eat, 
or sleep, or play. Men do. Before work can begin 
on railroads, dams or tunnels, places must be pro- 
vided where the workmen can sleep and rest. No 
matter how far away in some wilderness this work 
is there must be food for the men to eat — good 
food and plenty of it. More important still, there 
must be water for them to drink, even in the midst 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


18 

of a desert. Men must be well fed and made fairly 
comfortable, or they will not stay on the job. 

Cities are born and grow in the same way, only 
these are to be lasting and are built accordingly, 
while the construction camp is for a short time 
only. Sometimes, when the work undertaken is 
expected to last several years, during which time 
the camp need not be moved, as when a huge dam 
is to be built, the camp is made very like a city, 
with comfortable houses, well heated in winter; 
regularly laid out streets; electric lights; machine 
shops and power plants; a baseball park and mov- 
ing picture show; sometimes schools for the work- 
men’s children; — for everything possible must be 
done to get men to stay in the wilderness until the 
job has been completed. 

Others, where there is only one season’s work 
or where the camp must be moved from time to 
time as the work progresses, have only such con- 
veniences as are necessary to the comfort of the 
men. Camp No. I was one of these, although it 
seemed a remarkable place to Bob and Bill when 
they first drove up in Mr. Vreeland’s car a little 
before noon. 

What they saw was a scattered group of shanties 
and tents, perhaps twenty altogether, in among 
some trees which fringed the bank of a small 


CAMP NUMBER ONE 


19 


stream. From over beyond came the chug- 
chugging of a monster machine, out of sight itself, 
but throwing black clouds of smoke high in the air. 
Noisy locomotives were pulling and pushing trains 
to and fro. 

“ Here is your tent, boys,” said Mr. Vreeland, 
leading the way. “You will be welcome to use 
my shanty over there whenever you like, but the 
idea of living in a tent seemed to suit you pretty 
well.” 

“ It’ll be great! ’’ Bob exclaimed. 

“ You betcher life ! ” Bill echoed, with en- 
thusiasm. 

“ Now, make yourselves at home. I must leave 
you for a time, for I have a bushel of work to get 
out of the way before dinner.” 

Having placed their bags in the tent, the boys 
strolled around the camp. After a while they came 
to a rough board building, a sign on which read, 
“The Robert Vreeland Construction Co. — Office.” 

Just then somebody opened the door and went 
in, and the boys followed, hesitatingly, not sure 
whether they would be wanted there or not. Mr. 
Vreeland sat at a desk, talking with the man who 
had gone in before them. 

A young chap, about eighteen years of age, sat 
just inside a railing, busily pounding a typewriter. 


20 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


The boys noticed him particularly because his hair 
was so very red and his face seemed a mass of 
freckles. One of his keen, blue eyes winked at 
them solemnly, when the owner caught sight of 
the unusual visitors. 

Bob wasn’t sure at first about the wink because 
the typewriter had not missed a single beat and no 
further notice had been taken of their presence. 
Then the other eye winked just as solemnly, and 
while the lads looked on in astonishment two 
freckled ears moved up and down in a way which 
it plainly never had been intended that human ears 
should move, and the scalp under the shock of 
red hair twitched unmistakably. 

At that moment the contractor caught sight of 
the boys and motioned for them to come in. 

“ Here is where I work,” he told them, “ when 
I am not working somewhere else.” 

“ Red,” he called, turning toward the youth at 
the typewriter, “ how near are you through with 
that letter? ” 

“ Just finishing, sir.” 

“ When you get through, show these boys 
around and see that they get something to eat 
when the time comes. How about it, Bob? Do 
you think you will be able to eat anything? ” 

“ Maybe I can sit up and take a little nourish- 


CAMP NUMBER ONE 21 

ment,” said Bob, who was half starved by that 
time. 

Red grinned and gave the boys an approving 
glance; then laid the letter on the contractor’s 
desk. 

“All right, fellows; let’s go,” he said, reaching 
for his hat. 

“Are you the old m — er — Mr. Vreeland’s 
sons?” he asked, after they had gone outside. 

“ Bill isn’t, but I am,” Bob told him. “ My 
name is Robert Bradford Vreeland, but folks ’most 
always call me Bob. This is Bill Wilson; my chum. 
We came down to spend our vacation in camp.” 

“ Then you ain’t German spies ! ” exclaimed Red, 
with a sigh of relief. 

“We wouldn’t do such a thing. What makes 
you say that? ” 

“Nothing, only I heard th — Mr. Vreeland tell 
somebody to keep his eyes peeled because there 
was a lot of spy business going on.” 

“We came dowrn to learn how to build a rail- 
road.” 

“Jiminy! That is exactly what I came down 
for. It is a great business. You either make a lot 
of money or you go broke, and it’s interesting 
either way.” 

“My name is Hurley,” he went on, after a 


22 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


minute, “James Ascalon Hurley, but as you’ll 
probably be calling me * Red * before you have 
been here a day and a half you may as well 
begin now. Perhaps you’ve noticed that my hair 
is sort of reddish? ” 

“Great snakes!” said Bill. “I’m glad you told 
us that. I was afraid that maybe I was color- 
blind.” 

“ I wear it this way,” explained the new friend, 
“red being a fast color. We have to work lively 
here.” 

The boys laughed and already felt well ac- 
quainted. 

“ Here is the commissary,” said Red, leading 
the way through an open door into a small 
building. 

“ What’s a commissary? ” 

“ It’s a sort of department store like Field’s up 
in Chicago, only here the departments are all on 
one shelf. You see, we’re a long way from town 
and have to carry a stock of all the things which 
the men might need. They can buy almost any- 
thing here from candy and pop to rubber boots and 
navy beans. Every camp has to have a commis- 
sary. I know of one where they carry a $15,000 
stock; it is like a regular country store. We don’t 
need that much here.” 


CAMP NUMBER ONE 


23 


“ What is that long building over there? ” 

“ Keep your eyes glued to that, boy. That is 
where you will take the nourishment you told us 
about a while ago.” 

The boys looked inside and saw a roughly 
boarded room, with a board table on each side, 
running nearly the whole length. There were no 
chairs. Benches, each made of a single plank, had 
been built around the tables, much like those some- 
times found in picnic grounds. 

Except for the food still on the stove, these 
tables were ready for dinner. At each place were 
a heavy cup and saucer, plate, iron spoon, knife 
and fork. Scattered through the middle of the 
table stood plates heaped high with bread, various 
kinds of pies, and other good things. 

This room opened into a kitchen, where the 
cook and his helpers were getting the noonday 
meal. 

“ It smells good to me,” said Bob, sniffing the 
pleasing odors. 

“ We’ll have just about time to glance at the 
quarters of the men before the gong,” said Red, 
looking at his watch. 

Most of the men were living in tents like their 
own. There were a few shanties, however, made 
of rough lumber and heavy tar paper. The 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


24 

foreign-born laborers had a group of tents 
by themselves and ate at their own boarding 
houses. 

The familiar sound of an anvil attracted the boys 
and they soon found a brawny blacksmith hard at 
work at his forge. It was an outdoor shop, the 
only shelter being a board roof overhead. 

“We can’t send to the city every time a shovel 
or car needs fixing,” said Red. “All the small 
repair work is done in our field shops and it saves 
a lot of time and money. Some camps have regu- 
lar machine shops with power lathes and all that 
sort of thing, but we couldn’t afford that for a six 
months’ job.” 

“ The men are quitting work,” exclaimed Bill, as 
he saw them hurrying toward camp. 

“Yes; it is noon. They are going to wash up, 
and that is what we’d better be doing. The gong 
will ring in a few minutes.” 

Before they were ready they heard it, “ Clingity- 
clang, clangity-cling, clingity, clangity, cling, clang, 
cling.” 

They could see a man pounding a steel triangle, 
which hung suspended back of the eating shanty. 
Did you ever pull a stick across a picket fence and 
play a little tune with it on the pickets? The man 
was doing much the same thing to the triangle, 


CAMP NUMBER ONE 


25 

only he had a piece of iron instead of a stick. He 
drew the iron about on the inside of the triangle, 
fast, then slow, with jerky motions that caused a 
sort of tune to ring out, and a welcome tune it was 
to the hungry men. 

There was no need for asking what it meant. At 
the first sound Red started toward the shanty, the 
two boys close at his heels. 

“ Hurry/' he urged, “ or we’ll be too late.” 

Before they had found seats the men came 
crowding in — young fellows, fresh from school; 
grizzled veterans, whose lives consisted of following 
the shovel from one job to another, hardy men 
with toughened muscles, used to rough work away 
from the refining influences of home; and along 
with the others, Mr. Vreeland, the “ big boss,” 
giving a cheery word here and there as he recog- 
nized men whom he knew by name. 

Employer and men, shovel-runners, blacksmiths, 
clerks and the others, all were equals at the dinner 
table, or, if any, he was first who enjoyed the 
mightiest appetite. All were eagerly following 
with their eyes the steaming platters of meat and 
vegetables, which were passing from one to an- 
other around the tables. 

“ Great snakes!” said Bill, making his way to 
the door after putting away a surprising quantity 


26 THE TRAIL MAKERS 

of food. “Not much style but some eats; be- 
lieve me ! ” 

As Red had a busy afternoon before him, the 
boys said good-by at the close of the noon hour 
and went by themselves down to the nearest cut. 
There they watched the steamshovel load train 
after train with earth from the hillside, and the 
loaded trains steam away to other parts of the 
work. It was all very interesting and the after- 
noon passed quickly. 

That evening Bob sat quiet for so long a time, 
pondering something deeply and smiling to himself 
the while, that his father asked what he was think- 
ing about. 

“ I was thinking, Dad,” Bob told him, “ that you 
are getting paid for doing in a big way what I used 
to do in a small way for fun when I was a kid. 
Don’t you remember how I used to dig up dirt in 
one part of the yard and carry it over to another 
part, and you used to tell me to be careful not to 
let the Chinamen come up through the hole? It 
seems to me that is about all you and these other 
men are doing.” 

“ True enough,” laughed the contractor, laying 
his hand fondly on the boy’s head, “ except that 
we are working to some good purpose, I hope, 
while you only thought you were. You’ll find it 


CAMP NUMBER ONE 


27 


true all through life, Bob, that there’s not very 
much difference between work and play except 
that work is something which has to be done and 
play is done merely for pleasure. You will be a 
lucky man, when you have grown up, if your work 
becomes so enjoyable that it seems like play. 

“ You will find another thing true. Very much 
of the world’s work is, as you say, what you did 
when a child — digging out a part of the earth’s 
crust here and moving it over there. Look around 
you and see if this isn’t so. Our mines, quarries, 
gravel pits, clay banks and construction work gen- 
erally, are just that thing.” 

“ That’s right,” said Bob, sleepily. “ It’s a won- 
der the earth doesn’t get lopsided.” 


CHAPTER III 


JAMES ASCALON HURLEY 

James Ascalon Hurley, his red hair shining 
in a ray of Tennessee sunshine like a bonfire on 
a dark night, pounded his typewriter busily and 
grinned to himself the while. Occasionally he 
darted out to various parts of the work on some 
errand, but the smile did not fade. 

Red seemed uncommonly pleased with himself 
and with the world in general. He usually was 
full of good humor but this was his first long stay 
away from home and he sometimes felt lonesome. 
The arrival of Bob and Bill had added zest to his 
life, although the boys were several years younger. 
A healthy, fun-loving boy can not work and study 
all the time. 

He caught sight of his young friends only once 
during that afternoon. He was hurrying back to 
the office after an errand outside and stopped for 
a moment’s chat. 

“ Say, kid, where do you get that 4 Bradford * 
stuff?” he asked, thinking of Bob’s introduction 
of himself a few hours before and of the emphasis 
placed on his middle name. 


28 


JAMES ASCALON HURLEY 29 

“ One of my ancestors was William Bradford,” 
Bob told him, adding proudly, “ He was governor 
of Massachusetts and came over in the May- 
flower.” 

“ It’s lucky for you that he did, boy. Your dad 
would be building railroads for England now, be- 
hind the battle lines in France, if it hadn’t been for 
the Mayflower. We came over in the steerage.” 

“ You got here, just the same,” said Bob, 
politely. “Where did you come from?” 

“Me? I’m a Frenchman from Cork, or my 
father was. He was a well-known man in his 
day.” 

“ He was on the stage,” he added, in a hoarse 
whisper. 

“Gee, an actor!” exclaimed Bob, his pride in 
his famous ancestor. Governor Bradford, receiving 
a sudden jolt. “ Maybe that is why you can wig- 
gle your ears like you did when we first saw you, 
and make up such faces.” 

Red wiggled his ears and twitched his scalp be- 
fore replying, a feat which never failed to be 
received with astonishment. 

“He was some actor, all right,” he explained, 
“ but not exactly in the way you mean.” 

“You said he was on the stage, didn’t you? ” 

“ Sure, he was on the stage as long as he lived, 


3 o THE TRAIL MAKERS 

— daytimes, anyhow. He had to be. He drove one 
in Ireland.” 

After her husband’s death, leaving four father- 
less children, Mrs. Hurley did what so many had 
done before, took her little family and sailed for 
America, the land of promise. The struggle was 
a hard one, but she managed to keep the children 
decently clothed and in school. James, the oldest, 
named after his father, with his flaming head and 
Irish wit, became a marked person and great 
favorite wherever he went. 

The breaking out of the European War in 
August, 1914, found him in high school, planning 
to finish the course and then to work his way 
through college, for he was ambitious to become a 
civil engineer. With this in view he had been 
studying shorthand and typewriting in a night 
school. Some one had told him that if he could 
write shorthand he would be able to earn more 
money in less time, while taking a college course, 
than in any other way. 

The great war, however, reached out a long arm 
and changed the course of his life, as it did that of 
many another. The cost of living went higher and 
higher until it was all Mrs. Hurley could do, even 
with Red’s help, to buy food for her family and 
keep a decent roof over their heads. 


JAMES ASCALON HURLEY 31 

The boy watched the struggle and took part in 
it for two years, with growing concern for his 
mother, until the close of his junior year in high 
school, and then faced the situation manfully. 

“ I could take care of myself and work my way 
through college, I know I could,” he thought, 
“ but that is all I could do, if I expected to have 
time to learn anything. That would leave mother 
to do all the rest without any help from me. It 
ain’t right and I am not going to stand for it. She 
works too hard already. I am going to quit right 
here and get a job, — in an engineer’s office, if I 
can, where I can keep on learning.” 

After that he became a close reader of the want 
columns in the Chicago papers until one day a 
certain advertisement caught his eye and he 
felt that he had found the work he was looking 
for. 

“ Wanted,” the notice read, “ a young man 
stenographer, to work in a railroad camp. One 
who is ambitious to learn the business preferred. 
Will pay $30.00 per month, board, bunk and trans- 
portation, to right party.” It was signed “ The 
Robert Vreeland Construction Company.” 

The next mail carried a letter from Red to the 
address given, and it secured him the job. To get 
his mother’s consent was more difficult and Red 


32 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


wisely had put it off until he was sure of the place. 
Poor as she was, Mrs. Hurley had hoped and 
prayed that somehow her promising son would be 
able to have a college education. 

“ But, mother,” Red argued, “ there is more than 
one way to get an education. College is a fine way, 
if you can afford it, but when you can’t the thing 
to do is to find the next best thing. This job will 
be better for me than college. The office is 
twenty miles from town, the letter says, at a rail- 
road construction camp. There will be nothing 
else to do after work but study. Think what a fine 
thing it will be to see the things done that I am 
studying about, and maybe help do them myself. 
There are a lot of contractors, making all kinds 
of money, who never went to school as much as 
I have even, let alone college. They began at the 
bottom in the business and worked up. 

“That is what I’ll do, only I’ll do better still, 
I’ll study books at the same time. You’d be work- 
ing your head off if I finished high school and went 
to college. Then what would I do? I’d get all 
tired out beating the life out of the children to 
make them mind. Now I shall be able to send 
home $20.00 a month, anyhow, besides taking care 
of myself. Think what a help that would be to 
you.” 


JAMES ASCALON HURLEY 


33 


“ It sure would,” said Mrs. Hurley, wistfully, 
“ but O, Jimmy-boy, I did want to see ye become 
a college gintleman and take your place with the 
best of thim. It was your father’s wish.” 

“ Give me time, mother, and while you are wait- 
ing, watch my smoke.” 

That was how Red happened to be working in 
Mr. Vreeland’s office. He picked up knowledge 
rapidly, for he was an unusually bright boy, on the 
inside of his head as well as outside. 

We often read in stories of bad men taking ad- 
vantage of poor boys and keeping them down but 
such things do not happen very often, in America, 
anyhow. When a boy is found who is bright and 
energetic and striving to get ahead, nearly every 
one stands ready to push him along. 

So it was with Red Hurley. Wherever the lad 
went, up and down the work, his good nature 
spread among the men and won him friends. From 
the contractor down, all seemed anxious to give 
him a helping hand. 

Best of all, was the help which he received from 
George Lee, the young engineer who had run to 
Bob’s assistance at the time this story opened. 
Lee was what is called “ resident engineer,” or on 
some railroads, “ engineer-in-charge.” He was an 
engineer who lived on the job and spent all his 


34 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


time on the work. Himself a young man, only a 
few years out of college and putting into practice 
some of the things he had learned there, he had felt 
drawn to young Hurley, even before he heard 
the story of the boy’s struggle to get an edu- 
cation. 

The resident engineer was not working for the 
contractor, although he had a little camp of his 
own near Camp No. I. He worked for the railroad 
company. It was his duty to see that the con- 
tractor built the railroad according to the plans 
which the chief engineer had prepared. When, as 
sometimes happened, a point came up that was 
not clear, it was his business to explain the plans 
so that the contractor would know what to do. 
Each month he made an estimate of the number 
of cubic yards of earth and rock which the big 
steamshovels and other earth-moving machines had 
taken out. On this estimate, payments to the con- 
tractor by the railroad company were based. 

Like every other piece of construction work, a 
railroad must take shape, first of all, in some man’s 
brain, and that man is the chief engineer. After 
it has been decided that a certain railroad, or rail- 
road extension, shall be built, there must be various 
surveys of the country through which the new rail- 
road is to pass, in order to find out the best route 


JAMES ASCALON HURLEY 


35 

for it to follow. Then, after a final location of the 
line has been made, drawings have to be prepared, 
showing a profile and map location, also cross- 
sections of the proposed roadbed, the character of 
the ground and the position and extent of cuts and 
embankments which must be made in order to 
bring the roadbed to the grade decided upon. The 
contractor who makes the roadbed is guided by 
these charts, called blue prints, and by marked 
stakes which have been driven into the ground 
along the line, indicating the exact amount of 
“ cut ” or “ fill/ 1 

When the country was young and it was a hard 
task to raise the great sums of money needed in 
railroad construction, when the importance of low 
operating cost was not so well understood as now, 
and there were no big steamshovels and dump 
cars, railroads were laid where they could be built 
for the least money, instead of where they could be 
operated for the least money. 

That is why some railroads are so crooked, with 
sharp curves and steep grades. It is now under- 
stood that curves and grades will be a heavy tax 
on every pound of freight carried over them 
throughout the life of the road. Railroad earnings 
are based on the cost per ton-mile, which means 
the cost of hauling one ton of freight one mile. 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


36 

The ton-mile cost is very small, only a fraction of 
a cent, but there are so many ton-miles in the 
course of a year’s business that the total is very 
large. It is easy to understand that it takes more 
fuel to haul a train up a steep grade than on 
a level and that rounding a curve increases the 
wear and tear on cars and track, but it was not 
always so clearly understood that the increase in 
the length of the haul, caused by curves, is a large 
item of annual expense. 

“ Suppose, Hurley,” explained Lee, in one of 
their confidential after-supper chats, “ that it costs 
a railroad a half-cent per ton-mile to haul freight, 
and that certain curves, put in to save a few thou- 
sand dollars at the start, lengthen the road one 
mile. Those curves then increase the cost of opera- 
tion a half-cent for every ton which is hauled over 
the track. A half-cent is a small matter in itself 
but when you stop to think that thousands of tons 
are hauled every day, you will see that the cost of 
the curves mounts into big money very rapidly and 
may warrant the spending of many thousand dol- 
lars to rebuild that part of the road.” 

“ What is the biggest grade on this road, Mr. 
Lee? ” This was early in their friendship. After- 
ward they came to know each other as “ George ” 
and “ Red.” 


JAMES ASCALON HURLEY 37 

“ Five-tenths of one per cent. There are 5280 
feet in a mile, as you have learned at school. A 
one per cent grade would give the track a rise of 
52.8 feet in a mile. A half of one per cent grade, 
half that, or 26.4 feet in 1 mile, which is nearly 
level.” 

“ You must remember,” he went on, “ that what 
is called the 4 maximum grade ’ on a railroad, the 
steepest grade on the line, limits the amount of 
freight that can be hauled over the line by a single 
locomotive. There may be only one such grade 
on the entire railroad and the remainder may be as 
level as a floor but no more cars can be handled 
at a time with one locomotive than the engine will 
be able to haul up that hill. Of course, the train 
can be taken over the hill in parts, or two loco- 
motives may be used for a short time, but that is 
expensive.” 

44 Faith,” said Red with a smile, 44 when I get to 
be an engineer, I’ll build all my railroads down- 
hill.” 

44 1 suppose you regard that as a joke,” his 
friend told him, 44 but that very thing is done some- 
times. The Great Northern Railroad is building 
a second main-line track, paralleling the other, 
although at some distance. One of these tracks is 
down-hill, with a four-tenths per cent grade into 


^8 THE TRAIL MAKERS 

St. Paul, and the other is down-hill, with a three- 
tenths per cent grade away from St. Paul. By 
routing through-freight to take advantage of those 
grades, the Great Northern will be able to run its 
heavily loaded trains down-hill both ways. 

“ You may never have noticed it but all over the 
country the big railroads are cutting down their 
grades and taking out curves, as fast as they can 
raise the money to do it. I was working on the 
Illinois Central in Kentucky last year, where an 
enormous amount of money was being spent to 
cut out seventeen curves and to reduce the maxi- 
mum grade from 1.25 per cent to five-tenths per 
cent — a rise of a little more than 26 feet to the 
mile instead of more than 66 feet. As a result of 
that change, the same locomotive which has been 
hauling 1450 tons to a train will be able to haul 
3300 tons. You can see what that will mean to the 
country as well as to the railroad, at a time when 
there is more freight to haul than there are loco- 
motives to handle it.” 

After their arrival Bob and Bill were present at 
many of these talks, and as they listened and asked 
questions they began to understand better what 
Mr. Vreeland and the young engineer were trying 
to do. The work became more and more interest- 
ing and railroads began to take on a new meaning. 


CHAPTER IV 


GIANT FIRECRACKERS 

Rapidly the work went forward, although too 
slowly to meet either the desire of the contractor 
or the demands of the railroad company. It was 
all a never-ending source of interest to Bob and 
Bill, so much so that they entirely forgot their 
plan to keep the camp supplied with fish. It is 
to be feared that they were not much help at 
the start, but they kept out of the way of the 
others and made themselves useful whenever they 
could find anything to do. 

At first there seemed nothing but confusion to 
them. The men were busy digging up the earth 
in one place and putting it somewhere else, just 
as Bob had told his father. That was before long 
talks with the engineer and the eager explanations 
of Red Hurley had made the purpose clear to the 
boys. Soon they began to see why great cuts in 
the hills, down through solid rock, were being 
made, and why a never-ending line of cars, filled 
with material, were being hauled away to be 
39 


/ 


40 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


dumped elsewhere, and they watched the growing 
“ estimate ” of the contractor with enthusiasm. 

“ You will have to look out for yourselves much 
of the time/’ Mr. Vreeland had told them. “ I am 
doing the work of two men these days and shall be 
away from the camp a great deal. Whenever a 
chance comes for you to help, Red will tell you 
what to do, and I’ll let him take you to different 
parts of the work from time to time. I was in- 
tending to show you around myself, but it is a man- 
sized job to keep men and supplies coming and to 
look after my other contracts.” 

“ We’ll be all right,” Bob told him. “If we 
don’t go with Red we can with Mr. Lee. He has to 
visit every part of the work. He told me so.” 

“All right; go to it. Be careful when you are 
around the cars and the steamshovel, and look out 
for the blasts. I want to send you home as good 
as new when the time comes.” 

Blasting, or “ shooting,” as it usually is called 
by the men, is an important part of digging rock. 
The jaws of a steamshovel are strong enough to 
bite into a bank of earth, tearing out stumps by 
the roots, but rock is too hard even for teeth of 
steel. Drilling holes in the rock, in which to place 
dynamite, or powder, must go on steadily, and the 
rock must be broken up with blasts from time to 


GIANT FIRECRACKERS 


4i 


time, in order to supply the hungry shovel with 
food which it can pick up. 

With ordinary care, Mr. Vreeland knew there 
would not be much danger of the boys getting 
hurt. Before every shot ample warning always 
was given and the boys had been told what to do. 

The very first time they started through the cut 
alone they were startled by a series of short, sharp 
toots from a locomotive’s whistle. There could be 
no mistaking the meaning. 

“ Run-run-run-run-run;” the locomotive shouted, 
as plain as day. 

Everybody ran, Bob and Bill with the others, 
seeking shelter from flying rocks or a position far 
enough away to be safe. 

Then came moments of intense waiting, with 
eyes glued to the spot where the shot was about to 
be fired, just as on the Fourth of July boys in their 
play wait for the firecrackers to go off, w T hich they 
have placed under an old tin can. More than one 
man, working in rock, has been hurt, just as some- 
times boys have been hurt on the Fourth, by not 
waiting long enough before running to see why the 
shot has not gone off. 

Suddenly as they looked, the ledge of rock in 
the distance was seen to heave and open; a great 
cloud of smoke and dust belched forth ; out of the 


42 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


cloud pieces of stone were hurled high in the air 
by the terrible power which had been let loose, 
then came raining down with a clatter; the earth 
trembled with the shock, and a great roar went 
echoing down the valley. 

“ Hurrah ! ” yelled Bill. “ It beats the Fourth 
of July. Come on, Bob.” 

The boys started on a run to see how much rock 
had been broken up, just as they would have 
started to look at the tin can after their firecrackers 
had gone off. 

“ Wait-wait-wait-wait-wait ! ” frantically shouted 
the locomotive, and the boys hurried back to their 
shelter. 

Once more they saw the heaving ledge; the 
cloud of smoke and dust; the flying stones. Then 
the men came out of their hiding places and went 
back to work as if nothing had happened. A great 
mass'of broken rock was ready for the shovel. 

As many as nine tons of dynamite are sent off 
at one time in difficult rock work, planted in a 
number of charges at different levels, the lowest 
charge more than seventy feet under the surface. 
There have been instances of shots of a thousand 
tons, but those are rare. In the hardest rock on 
his contract Mr. Vreeland was using about two 
pounds of dynamite to each cubic yard of rock 


GIANT FIRECRACKERS 


43 

loosened. It costs money to build railroads; it 
takes brains and energy, and wonderful machinery, 
which the boys never tired watching. 

Most boys like machinery and all boys should 
know something about the great tools by which 
the world is being rebuilt to suit the changing 
needs of men. 

Most fascinating of all to Bob were the steam- 
shovels. The shovel nearest camp was eating its 
way rapidly through the layers of dirt, called “ the 
overburden,” which covered the underlying rock. 
Another, some distance away, was working far be- 
low in the rock itself. 

It was lucky for Bob, when he plunged down the 
side of the cut, that it was the dirt cut and not rock, 
or he wouldn’t have escaped so easily. 

Jack Shumway, the shovel-runner, sometimes let 
the boys stand out of the way inside the covered 
part of the shovel and watch the machine in action, 
with Jack at the levers, making the monster do 
his bidding. Once in a while Bob was permitted 
to climb to the little platform above, stand with 
the craneman near the base of the swinging boom 
and jerk the cord which opens the dipper’s bottom 
and lets the load drop into the waiting car. 

It was great then to see the huge shovel bury 
its teeth in the bank of earth at the bottom of the 


44 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


cut and slowly lift its powerful jaws until every- 
thing in the way had been swallowed; then watch 
the load swing out over the train, standing on a 
track some feet above the shovel and to one side. 

“ Now! ” the craneman would say, as the dipper 
hovered over the car to be filled. 

Then with a jerk Bob would pull the cord which 
unfastened the steel bottom, letting the load of 
earth drop into the partly filled car, heaping the 
contents far above the sides. While the dipper 
was swinging back for another load, the train 
would move forward until the next empty car was 
in position to be filled. 

When an entire train of ten cars had been filled 
in this way it started for the “ dump,” and another 
took its place under the shovel. Sometimes the 
boys climbed into the locomotive of the loaded 
train for a two-mile ride down to the fill. 

“ Why do you back the train down instead of 
pull it? ” Bob shouted to the engineer, on the first 
of these trips, trying to make himself heard above 
the noise. 

“ You'll see when we get there,” said his 
friend, who was too busy just then to do much 
talking. 

At the end of the run they found that a light 
trestle had been built across a low place. It was 


GIANT FIRECRACKERS 


45 

made from trees which had been cut from the 
right-of-way. On top of this trestle a narrow 
gauge track had been laid, a continuation of the 
track on which they had been running. 

“ It would cost too much to build a trestle heavy 
enough to carry this engine and loaded train,” ex- 
plained the engineer, as he waited for his signals. 
“ So it is made only strong enough to support the 
empty cars. They are five-yard cars; that is, they 
would hold five cubic yards of water with the box 
even full. We pile on more dirt, of course.” 

Just then he caught the signal and backed the 
train until the forward car reached the end of 
the fill at the trestle. With a single blow at each, 
some waiting workmen unfastened two chains on 
one side of the car. They pushed a little and the 
bottom of the car began to tip; at the same time 
the side of the car lifted, and out slid the load and 
down the sloping embankment. 

In this way in a surprisingly short time each 
loaded car was dumped to one side or the other, 
at the end of the “ fill,” while the empty cars were 
pushed out on the trestle. 

“ How do they get the trestle out?” asked 
Bill. 

“ They don’t get it out. When the fill has been 
completed the top timbers which carry the track 


46 THE TRAIL MAKERS 

will be taken off for use somewhere else but the 
trestle will be left where it stands, buried in the 
earth.” 

Afterward the boys learned that these five-yard 
cars were small ones. Dump cars are made in 
various sizes, from one-half cubic yard capacity up 
to thirty cubic yards, to suit the work required. 
The large standard gauge cars are too heavy to be 
dumped by hand and compressed air is used as 
motive power. The engineer, sitting in the loco- 
motive cab, by pulling a lever can dump an entire 
train. 

The boys soon had a chance to see other kinds 
of tools at work. Some distance from Camp No. 
i there was a stretch of comparatively level coun- 
try where a fill had to be made to bring the railroad 
up to the desired grade and there were no cuts 
from which material could be obtained. To get 
dirt for this fill it had to be taken from along the 
right-of-way at one side. The making of this fill 
had been sublet by the general contractor, Mr. 
Vreeland, to another man, known as a sub-con- 
tractor. 

Bob was very curious to see this work because 
Red had told him that it was being done with 
“ Missouri mocking birds.” The singing of South- 
ern mocking birds had been a great delight to the 


GIANT FIRECRACKERS 


47 

boys, but they couldn’t understand how birds 
could be of any use in railroad work. 

“ Mocking birds ! ” exclaimed Bob. “ Now I 
know you are joking.” 

“What, me? Say, young fellow, if your father 
ever hears you speak so disrespectfully of my gray 
hairs there is going to be trouble.” 

“Aw, quit your kidding,” said Bill. “We hear 
what you say but don’t know what you are talking 
about.” 

“ Wait and see,” was the only explanation Red 
would give. 

This talk had taken place one day when the 
three boys were making a trip in the company’s 
automobile to look over that portion of the work. 
They drove as near as they could in the car; then 
parked the machine and started afoot through 
woods and across fields. 

It was a walk worth taking in early April. Birds 
were singing; the dogwood was white with blos- 
soms in the woods; violets fairly carpeted the 
ground, and the trees were beginning to show 
green. 

Finally, as they topped a low rise of land, Red 
stopped and held up one hand for the boys to 
listen. 

“ Listen for what? ” asked Bilk 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


48 

“ Missouri mocking birds. What do you sup- 
pose? ” 

The boys stood listening intently for the best 
part of a minute. 

“ There !” exclaimed Red. “Hear it? 

An unearthly sound, or series of sounds, came 
through the air. They had no trouble hearing it. 

“ Haw-hee, haw-hee, haw-hee!” 

“Aw, mules !” exclaimed Bob in disgust. 

“Sure! What did you think it was? We call 
them * Missouri mocking birds’ ! ” 

The boys hurried along and soon came out on 
a busy scene. Negro teamsters, called “ mule 
skinners,” or “ skinners ” for short, were working 
with wheeled scrapers, each scraper pulled by a 
team of “ Missouri mocking birds.” A wheeled 
scraper is a very large dustpan, mounted on 
wheels. It will hold a half cubic yard or more of 
dirt. Instead of the dirt being swept or shoveled 
into these overgrown dustpans they were being 
dragged along through plowed ground, each edge 
cutting under the ground far enough to fill the pan 
with dirt. 

“ Usually,” explained Red, “ the engineer locates 
the railroad in such a way that the cuts and fills 
balance; that is, there will be enough dirt taken out 
of the cuts to make the embankments, with only 


GIANT FIRECRACKERS 


49 

one handling of the material. It couldn’t be done 
here, so the dirt is being * borrowed/ and the place 
where they are taking it out is called a ‘ borrow 
pit.’ Sometimes a whole hill, containing, maybe, 
a million cubic yards, has to be borrowed to get dirt 
enough for a railroad fill, but more often the fills 
are made with material taken out of the cuts, the 
way we are doing at Camp No. I ” 

“How much are they going to borrow here?” 
asked Bob. 

“ I don't know. Wait. I’ll ask the foreman.” 

“ Are you the boss? ” said he, when he had gone 
closer. 

“Wall, mebby I am and mebby I ain’t,” replied 
the man, his eyes twinkling. “ I’m boss of my 
wife, if that’s what you mean.” 

“Faith!” said Red, looking him over in pre- 
tended astonishment, “ you are the first one I 
ever saw.” 


CHAPTER V 


GETTING READY FOR WAR 

Camp No. i was a little world all by itself, sur- 
rounded by a great wilderness. The group of tents 
and shanties stood on one of the ridges which 
cross the western part of Tennessee, from east to 
west. In early spring the roads were impassable 
except to those riding horseback, but now they 
had dried out and were in fairly good condition. 
These roads follow the ridges, winding around to 
seek the easiest grade, but the railroad was cutting 
almost straight across on a grade that was nearly 
level. Along the creek bottoms were a few little 
farms and log cabins. 

It had taken Mr. Vreeland two and a half months 
to move his heavy steamshovels out to the work, 
some miles from the nearest railroad siding and 
away from any wagon road except such as he was 
able to cut through the brush. One such machine 
weighs seventy tons. It was moved by putting 
eight wheels under each corner of the frame and 
pulling it slowly along with traction engines. A 
double block-and-tackle was used on steep hills, 


50 


GETTING READY FOR WAR 


5i 


one of the heavy traction engines standing still and 
acting as a “ dead-man ” to pull against. To get 
two large steamshovels on the job from Chicago 
had cost $30,000. 

At the start of the great cut the trains of dump 
cars had to be “ switch-backed,” or “ shooflied,” as 
it is sometimes called, up and down the hill, on a 
series of zigzag tracks. Boys who have climbed 
steep hills know how much easier it is to zigzag 
their way to the top. 

Into this camp, busy with its own problems and 
work, and with poor telephone service, news from 
the great outside world sometimes trickled slowly. 

Mr. Vreeland came back from a business trip 
one afternoon, looking very much disturbed. 

“ Red,” said he, “ I want to see George Lee just 
as soon as possible. He is out on the work some- 
where. I stopped at hi's office on the way over. 
Send the boys out to look for him, and you go 
yourself.” 

A half hour later the engineer hurried into the 
contractor’s office, followed by the boys. 

“ What is the matter, Mr. Vreeland? ” he asked, 
when he saw signs of trouble. “ Lost some more 
men? ” 

“ George,” said the contractor, solemnly, “ have 
you heard the news? ” 


5 ^ 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


“ I’ve been too busy to hear anything but the 
dinner gong.” 

“ The United States has declared war on Ger- 
many. ” 

“ Good ! ” almost shouted the young man, excit- 
edly. “ That means ‘ good-bye, Kaiser,’ and it’s 
me for the front. They have been calling for 
engineers all winter.” 

“ It means something else first, George,” said 
the contractor, placing one hand kindly on the 
eager young man’s shoulder. “ It means that this 
railroad must be completed in double-quick time, 
regardless of expense. It means that you will be 
able to do more for your country right here and 
now, by staying on this job, than you could by 
going to France.” 

“ I can’t see it that way,” said George, doubt- 
fully. 

“ Listen ! I have had exact and private informa- 
tion that the Government is going to build for war 
purposes a $75,000,000 explosives plant along the 
river and needs this railroad and needs it badly. 
There are other reasons, which have not been ex- 
plained. The railroad company, with the backing 
of the War Department, has agreed to change my 
contract. Instead of a unit-price per cubic yard, 
I am to get cost, plus a fair profit. That part will 


GETTING READY FOR WAR 


53 

be decided as soon as we can thresh the matter 
out.” 

“Can you get the labor? You are short- 
handed now.” 

“We’ve got to get the labor. We can’t get it 
for $2.25 per day which we have been paying. 
We’ll have to pay the price; that’s all.” 

“ The labor market was bad enough before,” he 
groaned. “ This will raise hob with it.” 

“ You should worry,” said the engineer, thinking 
of the “ cost-plus ” contract. 

“ Don’t forget that we contractors expect to stay 
in business long after the war closes and we can 
not afford to pay thirty-five and forty cents an hour 
for labor. That is what the Government will be 
doing before this thing is over, or I’ll miss my 
guess.” 

“ Then you think my work is here for the 
present? ” 

“ You are right it is here. Look at this.” 

He held up the first page of a newspaper. Big 
headlines told of mysterious explosions in munition 
plants, fires in warehouses and factory buildings, 
and labor troubles in various parts of the country. 

“ You mean ” 

“Spies!” hissed the excited contractor. “In- 
fernal German spies! The country is full of them. 


54 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


They will be thicker than flies around here inside of 
a week. Believe me, we’ll have our hands full 
right here, without looking for trouble in France.” 

“ And you have enough dynamite in that mag- 
azine over there,” added the young man, thought- 
fully, “ to blow the whole camp into kingdom- 
come.” 

“ George,” said Mr. Vreeland, after sending Red 
and the boys out on an errand, “ what I want of 
you is this: I want you to work for me. I have 
some other contracts which will take much of my 
time. I have been watching you ever since I 
started this job. You are young, but you will get 
over that. You know your business, just the same, 
and you are straight. Red is going to make a first 
class man in time, but just now I need a man of 
your caliber and your training as an engineer. It 
will be worth your while, too, and, as I said before, 
the country will need this railroad as soon as we 
possibly can get it in operation, and sooner. It 
will be easy for the railroad company to put a 
younger man in your place, or the Government 
can put in an army engineer, but I need you right 
now to help me make a speed record on this work.” 

George flushed with pleasure at the contractor’s 
praise but shook his head, doubtfully. 

“ I certainly appreciate what you have said about 


GETTING READY FOR WAR 


55 

me, Mr. Vreeland, and some day I mean to get into 
the contracting end of the game. In fact, I’d like 
nothing better than to be associated with a man 
like you in a business way; but I’ve got to look at 
the other side of the question. My place could be 
filled, of course, but until it is filled, I’ll have to 
stick by my job. I can not leave the railroad com- 
pany in the lurch.” 

“You are hired!” shouted the contractor, 
slapping the young engineer on the back with a 
force which nearly took away his breath. “ I wired 
the chief engineer before I left town and he agreed 
to release you at once, if you desire to make the 
change. Until things shape themselves a little 
more clearly he will divide your work between 
the other men. Now let’s get down to brass 
tacks.” 

“You are showing signs of speed, all right,” 
laughed Lee, clasping Mr. Vreeland’s hand in 
acceptance of his offer. “ You realize, of course, 
that the work will need a driver more than it will 
an engineer?” 

“ It will need both, and unless I am very much 
mistaken George Lee is both. You’ve got to be 
both. It will take most of my time to keep the men 
and supplies coming.” 

“What does the Government expect?” asked 


56 THE TRAIL MAKERS 

Lee, after he and the contractor had begun to dis- 
cuss the work. 

Mr. Vreeland pulled a telegram out of his pocket 
and handed it to him without comment. The 
young man looked at it and whistled; then read 
the message aloud: 

“War Department asks if you can have trains 
running over road in ninety days. Answer.” 

“What did you answer? ” 

“ I answered yes, but maybe not on a five-tenths 
per cent grade. Any old grade ought to do at a 
time like this. We’ll have to run a night shift to 
do that. I have ordered portable lights sent by 
return express. Here is the way we stand, George. 
You probably know better than I, on your division, 
anyhow, but it will clear up our brains to talk it 
over. 

“ The first twenty miles of the grade is nearly 
completed and ready for the steel except a stretch 
of a thousand feet through a swamp which hasn’t 
been touched. There was no hurry and we have 
been waiting for the engineer to decide how he 
wanted it handled. The second twenty miles is 
more than half done. It will take thirty to forty 
days, I figure, with rush work, to get a workable 
grade at the big cut. That will release one shovel. 
In less than ninety days, I believe, with good luck 


SETTING READY FOR WAR 


57 


we shall be able to finish the cut at Camp No. i, 
working night and day and putting on another 
shovel immediately. Then there is that 80,000- 
yard cut, half rock, which has not been touched. 
I was intending to move the first shovel-outfit 
there from the big cut.” 

“ That is the thing to do, anyhow, but we shall 
need another shovel at once to start the work, and 
it is not always easy to get hold of a steamshovel 
in a hurry.” 

“ I’ve got one. Bryce of Knoxville is loading his 
shovel and car outfit this very minute. It will be 
here tomorrow by special train.” 

The young man looked at his chief, admiringly. 
“ How about labor? ” 

“ I have wired agencies in Chicago and St. 
Louis to offer thirty-three cents an hour and trans- 
portation both ways, and to send me every good 
man they can get hold of. If we can’t get men for 
that, we’ll pay what will get them. 

“ What bothers me, George, is that swamp. 
I’d have had a sub-contractor on that long ago if 
I had known how to handle it. If the engineer had 
foreseen this rush he probably would have gone 
around it, but it is pretty late for that now. The 
swamp is fifteen feet deep, fifteen feet of vegetable 
soup. Red and I went over one day and pushed an 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


5 § 

iron pipe fifteen feet into the mass, although it is 
hard enough on top to hold up a man — pushed it, 
mind you. The grade of the railroad is four feet 
below the surface of the swamp. Can you beat it? 
I am thinking of putting a soup-ladle attachment on 
the shovel. ,, 

“ Set Bob and Bill to bailing it out with tin cans/’ 
laughed Lee, seeing that the boys had returned 
and were listening with great interest. “ Seriously, 
Mr. Vreeland, that swamp isn’t so bad. I know 
all about it and how they are going to handle it. 
They already are draining as much of it as they 
can through a series of pipes and open ditches. 

“Here is what they have decided to do next. 
It isn’t on my division but I heard the chief talking 
about it when he was down here. You will have 
to make a blanket-fill of earth across the swamp, 
wide enough for the track and with heavy shoul- 
ders on the sides. That fill will be carried several* 
feet above the surface of the swamp. As the 
heavy earth sinks into the swamp, its weight will 
push the muck up and out to one side. You’ll 
probably have to send some men with cross-cut 
saws, taking one handle off, and saw the surface 
mat of the swamp every ten feet or so, cutting at 
right angles with the center of the fill. That will 
make it easier for the weight of the fill to push the 


GETTING READY FOR WAR 


59 

muck up out of the way. After the fill has been 
made you will have to get in there with a light 
steamshovel, or perhaps handle it with a crane 
from above, and dig it out again down to grade, 
leaving the shoulders, of course/’ 

u How about it, Red?” he asked, hearing the 
young man chuckling to himself. 

“ Faith,” said Red, “ it makes me think of the 
doctor who was no good for fever, but was great 
stuff when it came to fits. So when he had a fever 
patient he first threw him into fits and then cured 
the fits.” 

“ We ought to get in touch with a small steam- 
shovel-outfit at once,” the engineer went on, still 
laughing at Red’s comparison. “We can’t wait to 
hear from the railroad company. We’ll need it, 
anyhow. There mustn’t be an hour wasted, for 
that fill will have to settle a while before you begin 
to dig it out, and every minute will count.” 

Calling Red to get his book, the contractor dic- 
tated a half dozen telegrams, and when they had 
been typed sent the boys in the car to the nearest 
telegraph office, with orders to wait for the 
answers. 

“There is another thing, Mr. Vreeland,” said 
George, when they had gone. “ You have asked 
me to work for you and I am going to do it to the 


6o 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


best of my ability. I want to promote Red Hur- 
ley and have him work for me. Til need somebody, 
for I shall not be able to be everywhere at once. 
Red is something of an engineer himself. He has 
picked up a surprising amount of knowledge since 
he came down here. He is popular with the men 
and is absolutely dependable. He is just as bright 
as he looks, too. If anybody tries to start some- 
thing around here, Red will be the first one to find 
it out ” 


CHAPTER VI 


“ OLD SNEEZE-TWICE ” 

Then came busy days for the Robert Vreeland 
Construction Company and for all the men em- 
ployed on the work. As Mr. Vreeland had fore- 
seen, much of his time was taken up with outside 
duties — in consultations, planning, and hustling to 
get enough machines, men and supplies, not only 
for Camp No. I, but all up and down the line. 

Supervision of the active field work was left to 
the young engineer, who was assisted with nimble 
feet and nimble brain by James Ascalon Hurley, 
happy in his promotion, although he cheerfully 
complained that he feared his hair would turn 
white. These two worked far into the night, 
hardly allowing themselves time for sleep, as they 
planned for the next day and days to come. 

The expected shovel-outfit from Knoxville had 
been hurried across the country from the nearest 
railroad siding and soon was eating its way 
through the one remaining ridge which had been 
left untouched. As soon as the portable lighting 
6s 


62 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


system had been installed, a night shift was put 
on and the work proceeded at high pressure. 

Steadily, hour after hour, day and night, loaded 
trains left the several shovels and steamed out to 
the dumps; then scurried back for other loads. 
Hour after hour, the loaded trains were dumped at 
the ends of the fills, and the embankments crept 
steadily across the trestles. 

Steamshovel work is largely a matter of getting 
rid of dirt, rather than of digging it. A machine 
which can pick up three cubic yards of material at 
every swing of the dipper, and can set its teeth 
into the bank for a fresh bite several times a 
minute, can dig out an enormous quantity of earth 
and rock in the course of twenty hours, more than 
can be taken care of easily. Moreover, it is an ex- 
pensive machine to buy and expensive to operate. 
A steamshovel must be kept busy if the month’s 
“ estimate ” is to show a profit. 

It is better that an empty train with its crew of 
two or three men should have to wait for the 
steamshovel than that the more costly shovel and 
its large crew should have to wait for a train. 
There must be trains enough, if it can be arranged, 
so that as fast as a loaded train leaves for the dump 
another will take its place under the shovel, with- 
out delay. Sometimes two are used; sometimes 


“OLD SNEEZE-TWICE 


63 


three, and sometimes more. It depends on the 
length of the haul; that is, the distance between 
the shovel and the place where the earth is to be 
dumped. It also depends on the nature of the 
ground, for there must be switches and passing- 
tracks conveniently placed, so that empty trains 
can be kept out of the way of loaded ones and 
rushed to the shovel without loss of time. All 
these things and more have to be thought out in 
advance, needed trestles built, and tracks laid. 

But forty steamshovels and a hundred trains 
would be of little help were there no places to put 
the dirt or stone. Consequently one of the great 
problems with which the young engineer grappled 
each night, was to plan enough dumps in the right 
places, with correct track lay-out, to keep the 
various shovels going. 

This does not mean that places must be found 
where dirt can be piled up any way to get rid of it, 
as boys might pile it in their play. Cuts and fills 
must balance, as far as possible. The rock and dirt 
taken out in cutting through the hills must be 
placed where needed for embankments across low 
places and with as short a haul as possible. 

George Lee certainly was a busy young man, 
those days, and Red Hurley, proud to be his assist- 
ant, had no time for wiggling his ears or twitching 


64 THE TRAIL MAKERS 

his scalp. The weeks were not long enough for 
what they had to do. 

The boys were able to help to some extent; Red 
saw to that. One of their jobs was to meet the 
trains at the nearest railroad station with “ Busy 
Lizzie/’ as Red had named the hard-working auto- 
mobile, which did duty at the camp, and take out 
to the work the men who were arriving in groups 
of two and three. It was great fun and they were 
learning something new every minute; but the 
vacation was going fast. 

“ Only three more days! ” groaned Bill one day. 
“I don’t want to go back, Bob. Do you? We 
haven’t been fishing more than two or three times 
since we came down here, and then we didn’t catch 
much of anything.” 

“ We can’t go,” said Bob. “ Who’ll drive Lizzie, 
if we leave? Who’ll get the men? Tell me that, 
will you? ” 

“ That’s a fact,” Bill exclaimed. “ It wouldn’t 
be right for us to do it. Betcher life we can’t go 
back on Uncle Sam. We ain’t old enough to fight, 
maybe, but we are Boy Scouts, and it is a Scout’s 
duty to stay on his job.” 

“ Yes, and there is going to be something doing. 
I heard George and Red talking about it. George 
doesn’t like the looks of things, he says. Some wop 


“ OLD SNEEZE-TWICE ” 65 

dropped a wrench into the gearing of the steam- 
shovel this morning.” 

“I know it; Jack Shumway told me. The man 
said that his hand was greasy and the wrench 
slipped. George fired him for it, just the 
same.” 

“ That is what he said; but did it slip? ” 

“ Does George think ? ” 

“ He doesn’t know. It might have slipped, of 
course. Anyhow, it used up those gears and the 
shovel can’t run until some more come from Mem- 
phis. They may get here tonight; then again, they 
may not. George is tearing his hair over it; says 
it will put him back several thousand yards.” 

“ Great snakes! It would be a mean trick to do 
a thing like that. I know the guy and don’t like his 
looks. I brought him over on one of the trips when 
you were not along. I can’t pronounce his name, 
but you can sneeze twice and say ‘ ki-hi.’ What 
shall we do about school? ” 

“ Dad will be back tonight and we’ll ask him to 
let us stay longer.” 

“ All right, and if he says we can, I’ll write to 
Aunt Martha tonight and get him to take the letter 
when he goes in the morning. That will fix it, I 
know.” 

Mr. Vreeland looked his satisfaction at the prog- 


66 THE TRAIL MAKERS 

ress which had been made but shook his head 
gravely over the incident of the wrench, when he 
learned what had happened. 

“ It doesn’t look good to me,” he said. “ Of 
course, the wrench may have slipped. Accidents 
sometimes happen, but it seems peculiar that it 
slipped where it could do the most harm.” 

“Harm!” exclaimed Lee. “If it hadn’t been 
for Jack Shumway, who was running the shovel at 
the time, the machine would have been put out of 
commission for a week. Jack saw what had hap- 
pened, stopped his engine, and kicked the man off 
the machine. Jack is one of the best men we have. 
He watches for trouble like a hawk. I raised his 
pay.” 

“What’s the fellow’s name?” 

“We called him Wernski. There was more to 
it than that, but it was near enough.” 

“ Where is he now? ” 

“ I paid him off and told him to get out of the 
camp as fast as his legs would carry him. I sup- 
pose I should have sent him to the train on the 
next trip over, but I was so mad I couldn’t see 
straight. He’ll be sending for his things about to- 
morrow.” 

“Well, it can’t be helped,” sighed the con- 
tractor, “ but we can not* stand many such acci- 


“ OLD SNEEZE-TWICE ” 67 

dents without getting so far behind our schedule 
that we never can catch up.” 

“ What is it, Bob?” he asked, seeing the boys 
waiting for a chance to speak to him. 

“ It’s most time for school to begin.” 

“ So it is. I have been so busy that I forgot all 
about it. You’d better get packed up tonight, 
ready to go. I’ll take you with me in the morning 
and start you off all right.” 

“ Dad,” said Bob, earnestly, “ we can’t go. It 
wouldn’t be right, now that the war is on. We’ve 
got to run Lizzie; nobody else has time. We are 
Scouts, and when our country needs us it is up to 
us to be Johnny-on-the-spot.” 

“ Do you mean that you don’t want to go back 
to school?” said his father in surprise. “ That 
would never do at all.” 

“ What is school for?” asked Bob, after throw- 
ing a look of despair at Bill. 

“ For one thing, it is to pound knowledge into 
the heads of two young rascals, sometimes called 
‘ the busy B’s.’ ” 

“ Well, a few weeks more down here won’t hurt 
us any. We’ll have a whole lifetime to make it 
up in. Besides, we are learning more down here 
than we ever could learn at school. You said so 
yourself.” 


68 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


44 That is true, Mr. Vreeland,” put in Lee, 
anxious to keep his young friends. 44 I never saw 
boys pick up so much information in so short a 
time as they have. It keeps me studying nights 
in order to be able to answer their questions.” 

44 Then, again,” smilingly observed the con- 
tractor, 44 school education has not always been 
necessary to successful earth-moving, although 
times have changed somewhat in that respect. Did 
you ever hear of old Mike Downey up in Chicago? 
Mike made a large fortune building railroads, 
although he was not very strong on what he called 
4 eddication.’ One day he was called upon to sign 
his name to a deed. The old chap ran out his 
tongue and after much labor managed to write, 
4 Mike Downey.’ 

44 4 1 think you’d better sign your first name 
44 Michael,” ’ said the lawyer who had drawn up the 
papers. 

44 4 Bedad,’ said Mike, 4 it took me four years 
to learn to write that good and that’s good 
enough.’ ” 

Mr. Vreeland finally consented to let the boys 
stay longer. The next morning he took with him 
a letter from Bill Wilson to his Aunt Martha, over 
which the young man had toiled even harder than 
old Mike did in signing his name. It had taken the 


“ OLD SNEEZE-TWICE ” 69 

combined efforts of both boys to write that letter 
and it “fixed things,” as Bill had predicted. 

The truth is that Mr. Vreeland was finding the 
boys much more helpful than he had thought pos- 
sible, when first they talked of visiting camp, and 
he needed all the help he could get. What clinched 
the matter, however, was the fact that the boys 
were learning a great deal which would be of use 
to them through life. 

“ It will be the making of Bob,” he muttered to 
himself, as the train hurried him away to other 
work. “ One of these days we’ll hang out a sign, 
4 Robert Vreeland & Son.’ ” 

One day after the shovel was working again Bill 
Wilson met the afternoon train alone, leaving Bob 
at the camp busy with other matters. There was 
to be a full load without crowding in an extra boy. 

As he -neared the camp, Bill’s attention was at- 
tracted by the figure of a man, skulking among 
some bushes at the side of the road. He would not 
have given the fellow a second glance had it not 
been so evident that he was trying to get out of 
sight as quickly as possible. 

The car was closer now, but the man was hidden 
from view for a moment; then he came into the 
open again, quickly dropped into a gully, and dis- 
appeared. In that part of Tennessee deep ditches 


7 €> 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


have been washed out through fields and along 
many roads by heavy rains, making the sidehills 
look like the battle-scarred trenches of France. 

He was in view an instant only, but Bill hap- 
pened to glance up at the same moment. With a 
start of surprise he recognized the fellow as the 
careless workman who several days before had 
dropped his wrench into the gearings of the steam- 
shovel, tying up that part of the work for a day and 
a half. 

“ Great snakes!” he muttered to himself, as he 
turned the car into a narrow road which had been 
cut through the brush to the camp. “ That’s queer. 
I wonder what old Sneeze-twice is sneaking around 
here for. He sent for his things several days ago. 
I’ll bet he is up to some mischief.” 

“Yes, sir,” he continued, as he stopped the car 
in front of the office, where Red was to take the 
men in charge. “ That chap’ll bear watching, all 
right, all right.” 

He waited a moment to tell Red about it, but 
that young man was too busy to talk; so he started 
out to find Bob. After a little search he discov- 
ered his friend in front of the boarding shanty, 
keeping a watchful eye on the steel triangle. 

“What’s the matter. Bob? ” he called. “Afraid 
somebody will steal the gong?” 


“ OLD SNEEZE-TWICE ” 


7i 

“ No danger. I want to make sure of hearing it 
when it rings. Say, you wouldn’t catch me wear- 
ing earmuffs down here in the winter time. 1 
might miss something.” 

At that moment his patience was rewarded; the 
cook’s helper came out and played his tune, which 
sounded better than grand opera to the hungry 
boys. 

There was so much to be done during the next 
twenty minutes that Bill gave himself up entirely 
to the important task of putting down the good 
things which the cook had provided. 

It was not until the two boys were lying on the 
grass in the course of an evening stroll through 
fields and woods, planning a fishing trip, that a 
fleeting glimpse of the same man against the west- 
ern sky brought the matter to his mind again. 

“ What do you suppose he’s up to? ” asked Bob, 
when he had heard the story. 

“ I don’t know, but he is up to something, I ’most 
know he is. He wouldn’t be trying to keep out of 
sight if he didn’t mean mischief. He wouldn’t be 
around here, anyhow. He hasn’t any business to 
be around here.” 

“ He told Jack he would ‘ get him ’ for kicking 
him off the shovel,” said Bob, thoughtfully. “ I’ll 
bet that is it,” he went on. “ He’s waiting until it 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


72 

gets dark enough and then he’ll sneak around and 
do up Jack.*’ 

“ A fat chance he’ll have. Jack could break him 
in two and not half try. Do you suppose he saw 
us?” 

“He couldn’t where we were lying. We only 
saw him for a second against the sky.” 

“ Then let’s do some sneaking around ourselves 
and see if we can find out what’s going on. We’re 
Scouts. Say, I wish Skinny Miller was here. 
Skinny would follow him to the ends of the earth.” 

Bob did not have the pleasure of knowing the 
valiant Skinny, leader of Bill’s Boy Scout patrol, 
but he didn’t need any urging. He and Jack had 
been warm friends since the accident at the shovel, 
when Shumway’s promptness had saved the boy 
from being crushed under the heavy dipper. 

Carefully, with hardly a sound, the two boys 
crawled among the bushes, making their way 
toward the spot where they had seen the man lurk- 
ing at the top of the ridge. They made slow prog- 
ress, but finally reached the place, reasonably 
certain that they had been neither seen nor 
heard. 

Not a trace of the man could they find, but be- 
yond, in a clearing, they could see a log house 
beside a small stream. They were in one of the 


“ OLD SNEEZE-TWICE 


73 


wildest parts of west Tennessee, which some years 
before this story opens had been given over largely 
to the manufacture of “ moonshine,” as whiskey is 
called, when made at night in hidden stills by the 
natives, in order to evade the tax. It had taken 
years to break up this illegal traffic and more than 
one revenue officer had been murdered while look- 
ing for this very hut which the boys had discovered 
by accident. However, they did not know this, 
and it was just as well for their peace of mind that 
they didn’t. 

“ The door is open,” whispered Bob, grasping 
Bill’s arm and pointing. “ I am sure nobody lives 
there. There are no signs of farming and there 
isn’t any place to farm.” 

{ “ We’ve treed our man, all right,” said Bill. 

“ He can’t leave without our seeing him, and when 
he comes out we’ll follow.” 

Slowly the shadows deepened and there was no 
sound except the twitter of some sleepy bird in a 
tree top. Still the boys continued their watch in 
growing excitement. 

Once their man came out and they made ready 
to follow him, but, after looking up the trail, he 
went in again. The boys were now certain of their 
ground and watched with greater confidence. 

Finally, when it seemed dark everywhere except 


74 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


in the clearing, they heard the sounds of a horse 
approaching down the trail. Their man heard it 
also and, coming out, waited for the horseman to 
appear. 

The newcomer tied his horse to a tree and beck- 
oned the first man into the hut. 

“What do you know about that?” exclaimed 
Bob. “ Who’s the other guy? ” 

“Search me; I never saw him before. It was 
too dark to see very well, but he didn’t look like 
anybody around the camp. 

“ It is mighty queer, meeting in the old lipt that 
way. They’re up to something. I’d give two cents 
to find out what, and I need the money.” 

“ That window is open,” said Bob, after a minute. 
“ If we stood under it we could hear what they are 
saying, even if we couldn’t see, only they might 
catch us at it.” 

“Great snakes!” said Bill, after keeping quiet 
a minute. “ They can’t any more than kill me. 
I’m going to find out what they are up to. 
Come on.” 

Keeping the tree, to which the horse had treen 
tied, between themselves and the window, the boys 
carefully made their way toward the hut. 

“ Wait,” whispered Bob, when they came to the 
tree. “ I’m going to untie the horse so that he’ll 


“ OLD SNEEZE-TWICE ” 


75 


wander away. They’ll think it was an accident/* 

A minute later the horse, finding himself free, 
contentedly commenced to munch the young grass, 
while Bob and Bill crawled slowly toward the hut, 
ready to spring to their feet and run should either 
of the men come out. 

Nothing happened, and after what seemed a long 
time they found themselves beneath the open 
window and arose to their feet, one on each side of 
the opening. They didn’t dare look in, but they 
could hear voices, and strained their ears to listen. 

One of the men was saying something which the 
boys couldn’t understand. They listened, puzzled 
for a moment, then Bob crawled across to Bill and 
whispered into his ear, 

“ German !” 

Bill nodded. Just then the speaker said one 
word which the boys could understand and spoke 
with such venom in his voice there was no mistak- 
ing his meaning. That word was “ Shumway,** 
the name of the shovel-runner who had kicked the 
fellow off the machine at the time of the dropping 
of the wrench. 

“ They are after Jack, just as I told you,” whis- 
pered Bob. 

Before they could listen further or decide what 
to do, heavy hands grabbed their collars from be- 


76 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


hind and in another second two badly frightened 
boys were being pushed toward the door of the 
hut. 

“ Great snakes! ” groaned Bill. “ I wish I hadn't 


come. 


CHAPTER VII 


THE HIDDEN HUT 

What had happened when the boys were seized 
from behind was this : While they were standing 
beneath the window listening, a third man came 
out of the woods and made his way rapidly toward 
the hut. As he was about to enter the door, he 
caught sight of the boys at the window. 

Creeping around the hut quietly, he soon was in 
position back of them. Not until they felt his iron 
grasp on their collars did they know that anybody 
was near. 

The men in the hut stared in surprise when the 
late comer entered, pushing two boys ahead of him. 
He said something in German, probably told where 
he had found them. Then, shaking Bob, whom he 
held with his right hand, as a terrier shakes a rat, 
he threw him into a corner and started to dispose 
in the same way of Bill, who was kicking and 
struggling in an effort to get away. 

“ You will, will you ! ” he exclaimed in good 
English, as one of the lad’s shoes struck him on the 
shin. 

He lifted a heavy foot and kicked the boy with 


77 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


78 

such force that, giving a little moan, Bill sank to 
his hands and knees on the floor, while the men 
laughed. 

The kick was a mistake. Up to that time Bill’s 
struggles had been those of fear, without purpose, 
other than a blind instinct to get away. The pain 
and the insult combined aroused him to action. 

Jumping to his feet, the boy gave a yell which 
seemed a cross between an Indian war-whoop and 
a dog fight. The blood-curdling yells of Bill Wil- 
son long had been famous back home for miles 
around Bob’s Hill. The men listened in amaze- 
ment; then gave shouts of anger as they saw what 
was happening. 

With one bound Bill reached the open window. 
With another, drawing up his knees as he hurtled 
through the air, he cleared the sill and dropped to 
the ground below. 

It had happened so quickly, the men gazed at 
each other in astonishment. When finally they 
sprang through the door the boy was running for 
the woods, a dim blotch in the gathering darkness. 

“ Stop ! Stop ! ” shouted one of the men. “ Stop, 
or I’ll shoot.” 

As he spoke he 'drew a pistol and fired in the 
general direction that Bill was traveling. There 
was another yell, awful to hear, then silence. 



As He Spoke the Man Pulled a Revolver and Fired 
in the General Direction Bill Was Traveling. 



THE HIDDEN HUT 


79 

| The man who had done the shooting, and seem- 
ingly was leader of the gang, gave a quick com- 
mand to the other two, which sent them hurry- 
ing toward the spot where Bill had been seen last. 
He himself, mindful of the other captive, hurried 
back into the hut. 

It was empty. 

Half dazed with fright, Bob had heard Bill’s yell 
and seen him vanish through the window. He 
then heard the shot, followed by an agonizing wail. 
With a groan of horror at his friend’s fate, he also 
jumped through the window and started on a run 
across the clearing, keeping the hut between him- 
self and the men. 

Uttering an oath, the man climbed through the 
window and started after him, shouting as he ran. 

Bob was in despair. He was only an ordinary 
runner and no match for the long legs of his pur- 
suer, who seemed to gain at every jump. Then, 
when capture seemed certain, he caught sight of 
something which gave him hope. Just ahead, 
feeding quietly, was the horse which he had un- 
tied — hours before — it seemed hours. In reality 
it was only a few minutes. He felt that once in 
the saddle, he would be safe, for Bob was used to 
horses and was a good rider. 

Would the animal stand still long enough to be 


8o 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 

caught? It all depended on that. As the boy drew 
near, the horse threw up his head with a snort. 
Giving one swift look behind, Bob slackened his 
pace to a walk and spoke gently to the animal. 
Then, as the horse started to wheel and run, he 
made a quick rush and grasped the bridle. In 
another moment the boy had climbed into the 
saddle and was kicking his heels against the horse's 
sides, shouting for speed. 

Again the pistol rang out without damage. The 
man was too anxious not to hurt the horse to shoot 
straight. Perhaps he had no intention of shooting 
straight and only was trying to scare Bob into 
stopping. 

If so, he was only half successful. Bob was 
scared, but he did not stop. With great bounds the 
horse speeded away like the wind, the boy cling- 
ing to his back and crouching over on the saddle, 
expecting every second to be hit with a bullet. 
Down the trail he vanished into the darkness, until 
finally he reached the road in safety and turned 
toward the camp. 

When George Lee and Red heard the sounds of 
a galloping horse approaching the office, they 
rushed to the door in surprise. 

“ Bill! ” gasped Bob, half sliding and half falling 
from the horse. “ They have shot him.” 


THE HIDDEN HUT 81 

‘‘Shot him? Shot Bill? Who has shot him?” 
demanded Lee. " Buck up, Bob,” he added, giving 
his friend a little shake. 

Then Bob pulled himself together and told his 
story. 

" Do you know that he was hit? ” asked Red. 

" No; I didn’t see him, but I heard him yell. It 
was awful.” 

" Bill Wilson yells every chance he gets,” Red 
told him. “ You ought to know that yourself. 
How much of a start did he have? ” 

" He got quite a start. You see, he took them by 
surprise.” 

"Then they never hit him; don’t you believe it 
for a minute. I have seen him run.” 

"Do you remember that hut, Red?” asked 
George. 

" No; never saw it. My work always has taken 
me in the other direction.” 

" You will have to go with us part way. Bob, 
and be our guide,” Lee told him. "We don’t want 
to lose any time. I’ll get a few men together and 
we’ll look into this thing. If anything has hap- 
pened to that boy,” he added with set jaw, " it 
will go hard with somebody. Meanwhile, we’ll 
keep this horse and see who claims it.” 

Red’s prediction turned out to be true, for just 


82 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


as a little band of men, with George Lee at their 
head, were about to start for the Hidden Hut, Bill 
Wilson himself ran out of the shadows. 

“Bob!” he panted, when he had seen the en- 
gineer. “ They’ve got him. Hurry!” 

Then he stopped short in astonishment, for he 
had caught sight of Bob, who was grinning with 
delight and relief — Bob, whom he had left in the 
hut when he started on his record-breaking run. 
He couldn’t understand it. 

“ You here ! ” he gasped. “ I left you in the hut 
and I’ve run all the way to save you ! ” 

“ Save nothing! ” said Bob, grasping his friend’s 
hand. “ Say, did you really expect me to stay in 
that hut, all alone by myself, after dark? ” 

“ We’d better take a look at the house, anyhow,” 
Lee decided, after Bill had caught his breath and 
told the story of his escape. “ I reckon you boys 
have had enough adventure for one evening and 
will be willing to stay in camp. We can find the 
way.” 

They both begged to be taken along, but George 
wouldn’t listen to it. 

“ You tell us where the place is and that will be 
enough. I don’t believe they will wait for us, but 
they might, and those men, whoever they are, will 

be armed.” 


THE HIDDEN HUT S3 

“ What will you do with them if they are 
caught?” some one asked. 

“ I don’t know what we can do. There is no law 
against three men meeting after work hours in an 
empty cabin, even if they do speak the German 
language. If they hadn’t attacked the boys, we 
should have nothing against them. At that, the 
boys stole their horse, or Bob did, so we seem to be 
even on that score. This railroad is very impor- 
tant and we don’t want to take any chances. From 
now on any suspicious circumstance must be re- 
ported to me at once and, take it from me, it will 
be followed up. Come on, men.” 

They found the place without much trouble, 
going around by the road until they reached the 
trail which led through the woods to the hut. 
When they had come out into the open, where they 
could see the cabin dimly through the darkness, 
the men halted for a moment to talk the matter 
over. There was no light in the house and no sign 
of life. 

“ I reckon this is the place,” said Lee. “ They 
either are waiting for us in the dark or have fled. 
It will make quite a difference which. I can’t 
afford to lose any of you men at this stage of the 
work. How about it, Joe? You are a native. 
What do you advise? ” 


84 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


“ Well, suh,” said Joe. “ I don’t know what you- 
all think about it, but I reckon I can shoot as 
straight as they can and mebbe a leetle straighten” 

“ That seems to be the opinion of all of us,” said 
Lee, after listening to the comments of the men; 
“ so let’s move on. Joe, suppose you and Pete cir- 
cle around and come up to the house from the 
other side. We might just as well be careful, al- 
though I do not believe there is anybody there. 
The rest of us will wait here a few minutes and 
then go forward.” 

A little later the men, after stealing up to the 
house, met at the step. George sent two men to 
guard the window; then tried the door. It was 
unlocked and he pushed it open. The house was 
empty, as he had expected. There were some 
signs of its having been occupied; that was all. 


CHAPTER VIII 


BILL WRITES A LETTER 

The adventure at the Hidden Hut was a great 
event in the lives of the two boys. Bill especially 
was elated over his success in escaping from the 
men and upsetting their plans, whatever they may 
have been. 

“ Betcher life they will think twice before they 
try that again,” he told Bob. “ I only wish I’d 
had a good look at the guy who kicked me, but I 
was in too big a hurry. Say, I’m going to write 
the Ravens back home about it. It will tickle 
Skinny ’most to death.” 

He gave up the whole of the next evening to 
this task, sitting in the office where George Lee 
and Red Hurley were busy with figures and re- 
ports. 

“ Give her my love, Bill,” said Red, looking up 
from his work. “ She must miss you terribly.” 

Bill grunted his disgust and refused to reply. 
The letter, which went out from camp next day, 
arrived in due time at Bob’s Hill and was read and 
re-read by the Ravens, sitting in their cave. It 
caused great excitement and much envy. 

85 


86 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


“ Dear Skinny and the Band,” wrote Bill. 
“ Don’t you wish you were out here with me, build- 
ing railroads, fighting the enemy, and things like 
that? Say, there was something doing from the 
minute we struck the camp. Railroad building is 
easy. All you do is to shovel a lot of dirt out of 
one place and put it somewhere else, like we built 
our dam at Peck’s Falls, that time. 

“ Red says to 4 give her his love.’ He thinks I 
am writing to a girl. There ain’t any such ani- 
mal; anyhow, not around here. Red Hurley is 
great stuff, only you have to wear blinders when 
you look at his hair. He works here and is going 
to be an engineer. He is older than we are, but 
we have a lot of fun with him, just the same, when 
he has time, which isn’t very often lately. I wrote 
you once before about coming down here with 
Bob Vreeland. 

“ What I want to tell you about this time, is the 
Hidden Hut and the gang we did up there. Bob 
and I tracked a man who had been fired for smash- 
ing one of the steamshovels and we trailed him 
to this Hidden Hut. It was in an awfully wild 
place, almost as wild as the Hopper, on the other 
side of Greylock. But, betcher life, he couldn’t get 
away from us. 

“We watched for him to come out and pretty 


BILL WRITES A LETTER 87 

soon we saw another guy on horseback ride up to 
the hut. Great snakes, Skinny, I wish you had 
been there with your rope. We could have cap- 
tured the whole gang. They were German spies, 
or something, and we couldn’t tell what they were 
saying, although we crept up under the window and 
listened. 

“Just then another one of the gang sneaked up 
behind, grabbed us by the collars, and shoved us 
into the hut. He never could have done it if he 
hadn’t sneaked up behind when we didn’t know 
he was there. He was a big fellow, too. Say, you 
ought to have seen Little Willie about that time. 
It was my busy day. I kicked the big stiff so hard 
that he dropped me and swore in Dutch, only I 
didn’t stop to listen. I let out a terrible yell 
and jumped through the window. It paralyzed 
them. 

“ Great snakes, the bullets flew around when 
they came to, but they never touched me. I was 
running for the camp like a streak of greased light- 
ning, to give the alarm. Bob got away, too, while 
they were looking for me. He jumped a horse 
which belonged to one of the men and got to camp 
before I did. Say, Paul Revere didn’t have any- 
thing on Bob. We are holding on to the horse. 
I’ve got a scheme, if they will let me try it. Turn 


88 THE TRAIL’ MAKERS 

him loose and let Bob and me track him. He’ll 
go home and then we’ll know who the guy was 
that shot at me. Believe me, when we get through 
with that gang, there will not be enough left of 
them to make a grease spot. 

“ This is a great place down here. The people 
who live here talk different. They don’t say they 
‘ guess ’ something will happen, but they ‘ reckon ’ 
it will. I told George Lee that it was raining. He 
knew it, of course, for it was coming down to beat 
the band and it was cold when it trickled down his 
neck. ‘Yes, suh,’ he said, ‘and it lacks right 
sma’t of being a wa’m rain.’ What do you know 
about that? 

“ Don’t you wish that you were old enough to 
go to the war? Bob and I wanted to go, but they 
wouldn’t let us. Mr. Vreeland, he’s the man at 
whose camp we are staying, Bob’s father, he says 
that we can help right here by keeping our eyes 
peeled and that Boy Scouts will have their hands 
full before this thing is over. 

“ Get busy, you fellows. You know what our 
Scout motto is, ‘Be Prepared!’ After I get this 
railroad built I am going back to Bob’s Hill; then 
we’ll take hold and do things. My folks are com- 
ing home from California some time this month, 
but they are going to let me stay here a while 


BILL WRITES A LETTER 89 

longer, on account of the railroad. Say hello to 
Benny Wade for me. 

“ Write soon and tell me what you are doing and 
all about the cave. 

“ Your friend, 

“ W . Wilson.” 

“ What's all that noise about Skinny's rope?” 
asked Red, who had been permitted to read the 
letter. 

“ Skinny always carries a rope for a lasso, and, 
believe me, sometimes it comes in handy. Betcher 
life, they don't monkey with Skinny when he has 
his rope along. Once he lassoed a bear; climbed a 
tree and dropped the lasso over the bear's head. 
It made the critter so mad Skinny didn't dare come 
down. He had to stay up in the tree a long time, 
until some one came to look for him and shot the 
bear. It turned out to be only a cub.” 

“ That is a good idea of yours, Bill, about the 
horse,” said George, when Red told him of the 
plan. “ It might work. We’ll try it tomorrow. ,, 

It wasn't done, however. When tomorrow came 
the horse was gone. Evidently the owner had 
come for it during the night and had managed to 
get the animal away without arousing the camp, 
much to Bill's disgust. 


90 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


“ Great snakes, Bob/' he exclaimed, when he had 
found out about the loss at breakfast time. “ We 
ought to have taken turns watching. That was a 
good scheme of mine and I ’most know we could 
have found out the owner. Now, we never may 
know.” 

“ Perhaps we can track the horse.” 

“ Bob, you’ve got a great head. Come on.” 

Having finished their breakfast, the two boys 
started for the corral, where the horse had been 
put for the night. It was easy to see where the 
animal had been led out and they were able to 
track him, or thought they were, some distance 
down the road. Then they lost the trail and were 
forced to return to camp. 

The secret meeting at the lonely cabin and the 
adventure of the boys, following so closely the 
seeming attempt to wreck the steamshovel and de- 
lay the work, troubled Lee more than he cared 
to show. 

“ Of course,” he said to Mr. Vreeland, a few days 
later, during one of the contractor’s flying visits 
to the camp, “ we haven’t a particle of proof that 
the fellow tried to wreck the shovel, or that the 
meeting in the log cabin had anything to do with 
the railroad at all. The attack on the boys also 
can be explained. It naturally would have made 


BILL WRITES A LETTER 


9i 


the men angry to find two boys under their win- 
dow, listening to what they were saying.” 

“ It looks bad, anyhow,” interrupted the con- 
tractor. “ I don’t need any proof to convince me 
that we can not be too careful, especially with so 
many men being added to the force. You’d better 
put on a night watchman to patrol the camp, with 
special orders to keep his eyes on the powder 
magazine.” 

“ I’ve done that already.” 

“ Good. I think we can rely on Bob and Bill, 
with the aid of Red, to watch things during the 
day. It takes a boy to find out what is going on. I 
remember that when I was a youngster there 
didn’t very much get away from us. How is the 
work going? ” 

“ As well as we could expect. The shovel here 
will get out twenty thousand yards this month, in 
spite of the delay. The others, of course, will do 
better.” 

“ Fine ! Can you get away tomorrow for a trip 
over the work? I want to see this end of it and 
would like to have you go along.” 

“ I reckon I can. Red can look after things for 
one day. I am due to make the trip, anyhow. I 
get daily reports, of course, but that isn’t like see- 
ing the work and getting a line on things myself.” 


92 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


“ How about Bob and Bill? I promised to take 
them over the line the first chance I had.” 

“ The boys are very promising youngsters,” said 
Lee, smiling, “ and think themselves very impor- 
tant. They feel that this railroad could not be built 
without their services, and it is a good way to have 
them feel. Still, the camp ought to be able to run 
one day without them. They deserve the trip, any- 
how, on account of the scare which they had. If 
ever there was a frightened boy, he was Robert 
Vreeland, Jr., when he rode in from the cabin in 
the woods the other night. It was good work, too, 
and may have kept us out of some serious trouble. 
We don’t know what those men had planned.” 

“ Get hold of Red tonight and give him full in- 
structions. It will be an all-day trip for us and 
we’ll have to start early.” 


CHAPTER IX 


A GAS ATTACK 

Bright and early next morning they were on their 
way, — the contractor and Lee on the back seat 
where they could talk over the work; the boys in 
front, with Bob at the wheel. Bob was very 
proud of “ Lizzie ” and he resolved to put her 
through her paces for his father’s benefit. 

“ She will do ’most anything but climb a tree,” 
he explained with enthusiasm, “ and she tried that 
once. Bill was driving.” 

“ Aw, g’wan,” growled Bill. “ I can handle 
Lizzie as well as you can, any day in the 
week.” 

“ Cut out the tree climbing, today, anyhow,” 
laughed Mr. Vreeland. “We haven’t time for 
such stunts.” 

“ Well, George,” he continued, turning to his 
superintendent, “ you seem to be making good 
progress, in spite of delays.” 

“We are trying hard, but there is something 
wrong somewhere. It is like rowing a boat against 
the current. I don’t feel sure of my labor; if I can 


93 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


94 

spot the chap who is making trouble I'll wring his 
neck. 

“ The worst of it is, I can’t put my finger on 
anything. Six loaded dump cars went down the 
fill one noon; and nobody to blame! The en- 
gineer says that he left them securely blocked 
when he went to dinner, but they went down, just 
the same. I don’t see now why they were not 
smashed into kindling wood. A few rods were 
bent, but that was easily mended. 

“ Then, the men are quitting in bunches. They 
have been coming and going all the time, we ex- 
pected that; but now they are leaving in bunches. 
We have all kinds — Austrians, Bulgarians, Ser- 
bians, and hoboes. Of course, the hobo will quit 
when he feels like it ; he only works for a stake and 
then moves on, but how about those foreigners? ” 

“ My opinion is that they will be so glad to be 
safe out of the muss over there in Europe we shall 
not have much trouble with them except, perhaps, 
in a few cases. The trouble makers must be 
weeded out.” 

“ Leave it to Red,” laughed Lee. “ I believe 
that boy can smell trouble coming. He smells so 
much of it he keeps me worried about half the 
time.” 

“Well, George,” said the contractor, kindly, 


A GAS ATTACK 


95 


“ that is one of the things I hired you for, to take 
some of the trouble off my mind. There will be 
enough left to keep me guessing. But remember 
this, my boy. If it were not for problems to solve 
there would not be much of interest in life, and 
there wouldn't be much growth.” 

“ And remember this,” he added, after a moment, 
slapping one hand down on his knee, “ and, Bob, 
you remember it too. Obstacles were made to be 
overcome, and there is always a way, under, over, 
or around, when they can not be moved, but there 
is a way. When we can’t get over or around a 
hill, we tunnel through.” 

“ By the way,” he asked, “ how is the tunnel 
coming? ” 

“ Fine. That plan of yours to put a Scotchman 
in charge of one heading, and an Irishman of the 
other, was simply great. Each is trying to outdo 
the other, as you said he would. Their rivalry is 
so fierce they hardly speak when they meet.” 

Mr. Vreeland laughed. “ It is a peculiar thing,” 
he said, “ that ninety per cent of the good tunnel 
men are either Scotch or Irish, and if you can get 
one working against the other, things are going 
to move. How much are you making a day? ” 

“The day shift averages ten feet; the night 
shift, about eight. They will do better than that 


96 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


this month. Eve hung up a bonus of $200 for the 
crew which is ahead at the end of the month. They 
are going after it in great shape. Every man is on 
tiptoe.” 

“ How far is it between the headings? ” 

“ They will meet in about six hundred feet.” 

“ Good work. Bob, drive to the tunnel the first 
thing. I am anxious to take a look at it. We can 
stop along as we come back.” 

The two men then began to talk over the details 
of tunnel building and the progress which was 
being made. It was too deep for the boys on the 
front seat and they soon became interested in 
their own plans. Afterward, however, George Lee 
took pains to explain the work to them in more 
simple language which they could understand. 

It has been said that this particular railroad, and 
it is true of most modern railroads, was being built 
in a nearly straight line and with a rise of only 
about twenty-six feet in a mile, at the very steepest 
place. This meant that the line would have to cross 
valleys above the natural surface of the ground, 
and cut through ridges below the natural surface 
of the ground. The “ fills ” in the valleys and the 
“ cuts ” through the ridges just about “ balanced ” 
each other, so that the dirt and rock taken out of 
the cuts could all be used in making the nearest 


A GAS ATTACK 


97 


fills, and only in a few places was it necessary to 
“ borrow ” dirt for filling. 

Should a, railroad be built where most of the dirt 
for the fills would have to be “borrowed”; that 
is, hauled in from some point off the work, and 
where the material from the cuts would have to be 
thrown away, or “ wasted,” as it is called, instead 
of being used to make a needed fill, the amount of 
material to be handled would be doubled and the 
cost greatly increased. 

There is a point, however, beyond which it would 
be cheaper to tunnel through a hill than to go 
through with an open cut. The depth to which a 
cut can be made properly, depends on local condi- 
tions, whether an extra amount of dirt is needed 
for the fills, etc. The “ Big Four ” Railroad near 
Dayton, Ohio, for example, in moving back on the 
hills to get away from floods, made one cut of 119 
feet. The material happened to be needed for 
building a levee not far away, which probably 
accounts for it. As a rule, however, an open cut 
does not exceed eighty feet. There are other fac- 
tors which have to be considered, of course, — the 
character of the material, the cost of bridging a 
cut, where a highway must be carried across, and 
things like that. 

The top of the hill, toward which Bob was driv- 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


98 

ing the car, was 130 feet above the grade of the 
railroad, and it would be cheaper to run a tunnel 
through the highest part, for a distance of a thou- 
sand feet, than to dig out all the material in making 
a cut. 

“We started two headings,” said Lee. 

“ That is what I want to know about,” inter- 
rupted Bob. “ What is a heading? ” 

“ In building a tunnel,” explained the engineer, 
“ the first thing to do is to get a small hole through. 
This hole is called a heading. We started two 
headings, — that is, McTavish and his gang started 
through the hill on one side and Cassidy and 
his gang, on the other. These men are driving 
holes toward each other, McTavish from the north 
and Cassidy from the south. If I have done my 
work right and if they do not run into a bed of 
quicksand, those two holes will meet to a fraction 
of an inch in about five weeks. 

“ Sometimes in building a large tunnel a shaft 
is sunk from the top of the hill to the grade of the 
tunnel and a heading is started each way from there 
also, making four in all. Sometimes several shafts 
are sunk and the number of headings increased 
accordingly. In this way a greater number of men 
can be worked. There is room for only a small 
gang in a heading.” 


A GAS ATTACK 


99 


“ What is a heading for, anyhow?” asked Bill. 
“Why don’t you start at both ends and dig the 
whole business out at once and be done with it? 
That is the way we boys do when we build our 
tunnels. Why, once ” 

Bill was about to tell a story of a tiny tunnel 
which the fellows at home once had built. 

“ Here, Bill,” Bob broke in, “ you drive a while. 
I am tired.” 

That settled Bill’s story, for it soon was taking 
all his attention to keep Lizzie from climbing a 
tree. 

“ I reckon Bill’s tunnel was smaller than this,” 
laughed George. “ You see, the heading gives the 
men a chance to get above the rock to be blasted 
and drill downward and blast as in open-cut work. 
We then can put in a small, revolving power- 
shovel and take the rest of the material out in a 
hurry. 

“ A cross-section of the tunnel is shaped like a 
horseshoe, and the heading is at the very top of the 
curve. Below that is what we call the “ bench,” 
which will be taken out with revolving shovels, 
loading into dump cars, just the same as in making 
a cut. I’ll give you some drawings when I get back 
to the office, which will help you to understand it.” 

“How do you make the heading? ” 


IOO 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


“ First a steamshovel cuts out the approach to 
the tunnel. Notice the next time you go through a 
tunnel on a train. You first enter a cut, whose 
sides grow higher and higher until that point is 
reached where it is cheaper to tunnel; then in you 
go. More than 100,000 cubic yards of material 
were taken out in cutting the two approaches to 
this tunnel. After the approaches had been cut 
we began to blast a hole through from each end 
with dynamite. As soon as the holes began to ex- 
tend into the hill, light tracks were laid. Small 
dump cars run on these tracks. The drill gangs do 
the blasting. They are followed by the ‘ muckers/ 
who shovel the broken stone, called * muck * by 
the men, into the small cars. When loaded these 
cars are pushed down to the entrance, and dumped 
into a chute, which carries the material down into 
a large dump car, standing on a track at the foot 
of the bench. The large dump cars are dumped at 
the nearest fill.” 

“ That is our compressor plant over there,” he 
continued, pointing toward a building which stood 
near a partly completed fill. “ The drills are 
worked by compressed air and the air is compressed 
in that building. It seems very strange that this 
air, which we breathe and can feel sometimes, but 
can not see, can be squeezed together and made to 


A GAS ATTACK 


IOI 


work for us in its struggles to get away. It can 
be squeezed so hard that it will form a liquid.” 

. “ Great snakes! ” yelled Bill, but whether at the 
thought of liquid air, or at the antics of Lizzie, 
nobody knew. 

“ Did you ever play with a pop-gun? ” asked the 
engineer. “ Well, a pop-gun is a compressor plant 
in its simplest form. The plunger squeezes the air 
down in the cylinder. When you pull the trigger 
the squeezed air is given more room and, as it 
expands, out flies the cork. Our machine also 
squeezes the air in a cylinder, by giving it a pres- 
sure of ioo pounds to each square inch. After the 
squeezing has been done the air occupies only 
about one-eighth the space that it did before. 
When squeezed into smaller space it constantly 
tries to expand again, as in a pop-gun, and the push 
that it gives can be made a source of great power. 

' “ From the machine the compressed air goes 

into a pipe, which carries it to the cylinder of an 
air drill where it is allowed to expand. This air 
drill is like a small steam engine. The push of the 
expanding air forces the piston back and forth 
rapidly. On the end of the piston is a drill, which 
in this way is driven into the rock. Each time the 
drill strikes the rock it turns a little and thus is 
made to cut a round hole. The noise is as if you 


102 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


were standing within two feet of a machine gun. 
Sometimes the men pour melted wax into their 
ears to keep out some of the sound.” 

“ After they get through drilling do they put 
dynamite into the hole? ” 

“ Yes and no. In hard rock, as in our tunnel, we 
have to ‘ spring the hole/ as it is called. That is, 
we have to enlarge the hole at the bottom in order 
to get room for the needed amount of dynamite. 
This is done by blasting. A stick of dynamite is 
put into the hole and exploded. That enlarges the 
hole at the end, but not enough. Then perhaps 
two sticks are put in and sent off. This enlarges it 
some more. After that still more explosive is put 
in, until finally the space at the bottom of the hole 
is made as large as needed. 

“What is called a ‘round’ of such holes, from 
four to six feet deep, are drilled; sometimes as 
many as fifteen altogether. Then comes the load- 
ing. We are using sixty per cent dynamite and 
placing as much as thirty-five pounds in a hole. By 
sixty per cent dynamite I mean that the stuff con- 
tains sixty per cent of nitroglycerine. The re- 
maining forty per cent is wood fiber, or pulp of 
some kind. The dynamite is crowded in and the 
holes leading to it are plugged up with ‘ tamping 9 
material, stone dust or earth. Then the whole 


A GAS ATTACK 


103 


round is shot off at once by electric current. It 
tears the rock loose in great shape.” 

Both boys were much interested in this talk, 
which lasted until the party were approaching the 
north heading. McTavish and his men were at 
work there, trying to dig faster than Cassidy and 
earn the two-hundred-dollar bonus. 

A weird sight met their gaze when the boys 
looked into the hole. The heading was lighted by 
electricity and the dripping “ muckers,” shoveling 
their way into the very heart of the hill, seemed 
like fiends stoking the furnaces of His Satanic 
Majesty. The noise of the drills was deafening. 

The contractor nodded to McTavish, but could 
not talk on account of the racket. Then he tore a 
leaf from his note book and wrote, 

“ How are you getting on, Mac? ” 

The Scotchman wrote back, 

“We’d be all right if we could get rid of the 
water and if they would give us our share of air. 
That wild Irishman at the other end is getting all 
the air. Tell Lee to give us some air if he wants 
this heading put through.” 

George laughed when Mr. Vreeland showed him 
the paper. They were making their way over the 
hill to the south heading. Big Cassidy stood some 
distance back from the entrance, wiping his sweat- 


104 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


ing face. He waved them away. The noise of the 
drills had stopped. 

“Well, Mike, how are they coming? ” asked the 
contractor, pleasantly. 

“ Pretty good, sor, if it wa’nt for the wather. 
How in ” 

Just then he caught sight of the boys, listening 
with open ears, and hastily cut out some of the 
remarks he had started to make. 

“ How can yez expict us to bore through 
wather? ” 

“ Scotty, over at the other end, has the same 
water,” said Lee, nudging his chief. “ He gets rid 
of it all right.” 

“ O, he does, does he? The blitherin’ mush-eater 
must be afther drinkin’ it thin. There ain’t no 
other way to get rid of it.” 

“How do yez think we can drill without air?” 
he exploded. “We are getting only siventy 
pounds of air and Scotty over there gets his ninety 
and a hundred right along.” 

Growing more excited, he said some things 
which wouldn’t look well in print. Then, as he was 
speaking, came the sound of a dull explosion within 
the heading, and a great volume of yellowish-white 
smoke poured out of the hole. 

As soon as the first rush was over Cassidy put 


A GAS ATTACK 


105 

his handkerchief to his face and dived into the 
opening, in order to turn on the compressed air so 
that the hole would clear of smoke more quickly. 

Lee was pointing out to his chief the crooked 
route which the railroad would take around the 
tunnel and over the ridge, until the bore could be 
completed. 

Bill was greatly interested in the heading and the 
results of the blast which had just gone off. When 
he saw the big foreman go in, he followed before 
any of the men could stop him, holding his hand- 
kerchief to his face as Cassidy had done. 

A moment later Lee glanced around and missed 
the boy. 

“ Where is Bill?” he asked. 

Bob pointed into the smoking heading. When 
he saw the look which came over the superin- 
tendent’s face, his own turned pale; and he realized 
how serious the case was. 

There was no time for words. The fumes of 
dynamite are powerful and deadly, which no one 
knew better than George Lee. He had seen more 
than one man overcome at that very heading, and 
by his orders some simple remedies were kept 
close at hand always. 

Whipping out his own handkerchief, George 
folded it over his nose and mouth and tied the ends 


io6 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


securely back of his head, that he might have the 
use of both arms. Then he hurriedly made his 
way into the heading. 

It seemed to the others, waiting there and watch- 
ing the outpouring of the yellow-white smoke, that 
he never would come out again. But he had been 
gone only a few moments when he staggered out, 
carrying a limp form in his arms. Cassidy was not 
far behind. 

The superintendent barely had strength to hand 
the boy to Mr. Vreeland who had hastened to meet 
him; then, snatching off the handkerchief, he sank 
to the ground, breathing in great gulps of pure air. 

When Bill so foolishly started to follow Cassidy 
into the heading he did not realize that, being much 
shorter than the big foreman, the heavy fumes of 
dynamite would be denser where he was compelled 
to breathe. He struggled along for a moment, 
holding the handkerchief close over his nose; then, 
gasping for breath and his head almost bursting 
with pain, he turned and tried to stagger back. 

It was too late. With a moan of despair he 
stumbled and fell, the handkerchief dropping away 
from his nose, and there his friend found him. It 
is possible that Cassidy might have stumbled over 
him on the way out, but Bill probably owed his 
life to the prompt action of George Lee, 


A GAS ATTACK 


107 

“ Stand back,” ordered the contractor, as the 
men crowded around. “ Give him air. Here, Bob, 
you’re a Boy Scout, thank God, and know how to 
do things. Catch hold of his arms and pump air 
into his lungs. I’m going to the foreman’s shanty 
to see if I can get the doctor on the ’phone. I 
don’t like the way the boy looks.” 

Under Bob’s vigorous treatment in a short time 
Bill’s eyelids began to quiver and his breath to 
come in short gasps. By the time Mr. Vreeland 
returned he was able to breathe naturally, but was 
out of his head and moaning with pain. 

The men had gone back to work. Cassidy was 
a driver and had seen too many accidents of the 
kind to be seriously alarmed. 

The contractor took Bill in his arms and carried 
him over to the shanty. When the physician 
finally arrived there was nothing for him to do but 
to feel of Bill’s pulse and look wise. 

“ The boy has had a severe dose,” he told them, 
“ but he is coming around all right.” 

“ Suppose you take him back to Camp No. 1 with 
you, Doctor, and put him to bed there,” said Mr. 
Vreeland. “ Lee and I want to look over the work 
on the way back.” 

The physician, who was employed by the con- 
struction company to look after the health of the 


io8 THE TRAIL MAKERS 

men and attend" to their injuries, readily agreed. 

“ You might as well stay with us, Bob,” con- 
tinued his father. “ You would do Bill more harm 
than good and besides there isn’t much room in the 
run-about. We’ll all go over to the car with him.” 

Lee once more took the boy in his strong arms 
and strode across the fields. A little later, with 
Bill sitting at his side, looking pale but game, the 
doctor drove off. 


CHAPTER X 


BOB INSPECTS THE WORK 

While Bill was jostling along a rough road toward 
the tent which for several weeks he had called 
home, feeling too miserable to care anything at all 
about the building of a tunnel or railroad, the con- 
tractor and his superintendent, closely followed by 
Bob, walked down the right-of-way, having sent a 
man along the road with the car. 

The work had to go on, regardless of accidents, 
and inspection was a part of the work. Yardage 
of material moved and placed in the fills, was all, 
that counted. Three thousand cubic yards taken 
out of the big cut yesterday? Good work! A 
laborer stabbed last night in a drunken brawl? 
Who brings in that liquor, anyhow? It is delaying 
the work. 

Whiskey was getting to be a real problem. In 
spite of all that Lee could do, and he could do 
much, some one was supplying the men with 
liquor. Stabbing affrays were not uncommon, 
especially on pay-day nights. 

On one such night Lee saw a man sneaking 
109 


no 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


through the gathering darkness at Camp No. i, 
with a jug in each hand. 

“ Here you ! ” called the superintendent. “ Let’s 
see what you’ve got in those jugs.” 

“ Them’s my jugs,” whined the fellow, “ and 
you’ve got nothing to say about ’em. You don’t 
own this land; it’s railroad property.” 

“Well, I’m building this railroad,” replied Lee, 
“ and I’m going to make those jugs my business. 
Stand where you are until I have seen what is in 
them.” 

The man only hurried on the faster. 

Lee said nothing more. There was a quick move 
of one arm. Two pistol shots rang out and two 
broken jugs spilled vile whiskey on the ground. 
With a yell of terror, the startled owner fairly 
flew down the path, still holding the now jugless 
handles. Gradually the men were learning that 
it was not safe to trifle with the young superin- 
tendent. 

The inspection party first went down to the new 
bridge, across which future trains would approach 
the tunnel from the south. A concrete gang was 
at work there, pouring and shaping the abutments. 

Bob had seen concrete work before and it never 
failed to interest him. Some day, when he had 
time, George had promised to tell him how it was 


BOB INSPECTS THE WORK m 

done. He watched the mixer stirring up the rich 
porridge and spewing it out into cars, from which 
it was poured into the abutment forms, while his 
father and Lee examined the finished concrete and 
listened to the complaints of the foreman. The 
material was “ not right ” and “ something was the 
matter with the mixer.” 

Lee winked at the contractor. In concrete work 
the material seldom is right and the mixer seems 
always out of order, according to the men in 
charge. 

Later they walked back toward Camp No. I, but 
Bob promised himself that he would return with 
Bill some day and have another look at the bridge. 

Soon they came to a fill which was being made 
with wheeled scrapers. There is no part of rail- 
road work more interesting to see than a gang of 
such scrapers in action. A short fill was being 
put in to meet the bridge and twenty wheeled 
scrapers were busy, scraping up dirt in one place 
and dumping it on the fill. 

This fill was being made in “benches”; that is, 
in a series of layers, each layer about five feet 
thick. When working in clay, bench-filling is not 
always thought necessary, but usually railroad 
companies require it. The reason for doing so is 
that the constant stepping by teams and men on 


1 12 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


these shallow layers of dirt as they are built up, 
makes the fill more solid and prevents settling 
after the track has been laid. 

The number of wheeled scrapers used in a gang 
depends on the length of the haul, 500 feet being 
considered a long haul for this type of earth-moving 
tool. If the haul is a short one, only a few are 
used. In this case the haul was long and there 
were twenty in the gang. 

It was a busy scene which Bob was watching. 
At the highest point a rooter plow was at work, 
drawn by a gasoline tractor. A rooter plow has a 
powerful steel shoe, tapering into a sharp wedge 
at the end. This tool was rooting up the hardpan, 
which made work difficult at that point. Hardpan 
is not quite rock, but is much harder than ordinary 
earth. It is a very hard clay, and must be broken 
up before the scrapers can handle it. 

Two mules, driven by a negro “ skinner,” pulled 
each scraper along on its wheels after it had been 
loaded, but were not strong enough to pull the 
scoop through the plowed ground while loading. 
During the loading an extra team was used, known 
as a “ snap team ” — four mules hitched abreast. 
This team, in turn, was snapped on to the front of 
each scraper, to help in the loading. The moment 
the four mules heard the click of the lever by means 


BOB INSPECTS THE WORK 


113 

of which the “ loader ” raised the loaded pan until 
it cleared the ground, they stopped without orders. 
At the same instant the driver unsnapped them 
from the scraper and hung the hook on a broad 
leather belt, which he wore for the purpose. 

While the snap team was waiting for the next 
empty scraper the two mules, hitched to the loaded 
scraper, were taking it to the dump — the con- 
stantly growing end of the fill. Here a “ dumper ” 
was stationed, to dump each scraper as it arrived 
at the very crown of the fill. Down went the mules 
over the edge, without stopping; then swung 
around and up again, and back for another 
load. 

Back and forth went the scrapers in an unending 
procession, forming a great oval in their course, 
the mules never hurrying and never slackening 
their pace, the skinners chanting their rude songs. 

When Lee heard the men singing he knew that 
the work was going on all right. Blindfolded, he 
could have told what class of work the men were 
doing and whether they were doing it well or not, 
simply by listening to their songs. The Southern 
negro has a different song for every kind of work, 
making up the words and tune as he goes along, 
which once heard never can be forgotten. 


1 14 THE TRAIL MAKERS 

Bob followed one man and tried to make out 
what he was singing. The words went something 
like this, 


“ Skinno-o-o, skinno-o-o, 

Wuhk lika foo-o-o-1, 

Git up early, an’ 

Curry yo’ mule, 

Grease up yo’ scrapah, 

Hook up yo’ team, 

Crack yo’ whip an* 

Git up steam. 

“ Heah comes de boss-man ; 

Can’t catch me, 

Slickest Niggah 
He evah see.” 

When the mules which Bob had been watching 
were on their way back from the dump, suddenly 
they stopped, and neither threats nor pleading 
could induce them to go on. Their keen eyes had 
seen, even before the skinner was aware of it, that 
no dirt had been plowed up ready for the scraper. 

A wonderful animal is the mule; seemingly rail- 
roads could not be built or wars fought without 
him. Those mules there, “ doing their bit ” to 
hurry along the completion of the railroad, hardly 
needed a driver. In short hauls mules sometimes 
are worked without drivers. 


BOB INSPECTS THE WORK 115 

Wise is the mule, not foolish, as so often is 
thought. A mule never will overeat. He can not 
be made to cross an unsafe bridge. He needs no 
whistle to sound the noon hour and no clock to 
tell the time. A little before noon those “ Mis- 
souri mocking birds ” add their song to that of the 
skinners. 

“ Hee-haw! Hee-haw!” they chant. Stop the 
work; it is time to quit. And if the work does not 
stop presently the mules stop. It is time to eat 
and they know it. 

“ Things seem to be going pretty well,” said Lee, 
as the foreman came up to report. 

“ Yes, suh; but I had to fire one of the men yes- 
terday. I caught him bringing in whiskey and ran 
him out of camp. He came back again and I 
kicked him off the place.” 

“ That’s right. I’ll break the head of the next 
man I find peddling the stuff.” 

“ A queer thing happened last night, suh. There 
was an awful racket in the corral and in the midst 
of the noise I could hear a man screaming. When 
I got out there what do you think I found? Old 
Jack, the best mule in the bunch, had that same 
man by the shoulder. His ears lay back and his 
teeth were in for keeps. I hated to strike Old 
Jack, but I had to hit him twice before he would 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


116 

let go. Don’t know what the man had been trying 
to do, hamstring the mules, I reckon.” 

“ What did you do with him? ” asked Mr. Vree- 
land. 

“ Well, suh, he was hurt pretty bad as it was; so 
I let him go. He’ll never show up around here 
again, and he’ll carry the marks of Old Jack’s teeth 
as long as he lives.” 

“ Which won’t be very long,” growled Lee, “ if 
he stirs up any more trouble. Who was the 
fellow? ” 

“ Some clay-eating white trash named Bret 
Johnson.” 

“ You see what we are up against,” said Lee to 
the contractor. “ That crazy fool might have put 
the whole bunch of mules out of business.” 

“ He might have,” said Mr. Vreeland, placing one 
hand kindly on the young man’s shoulder, “ but he 
didn’t, thanks to the mule. If we look after our 
business as well as Old Jack looks after his, we’ll 
come out on top.” 

“ That mule knows so much ” grinned the fore- 
man, “ skinners call him the * walking boss.’ ” 

Lee enjoyed the joke. He himself was the real 
walking boss and was so known from one end of 
the line to the other. 

Some time later Vreeland, the contractor, and 


BOB INSPECTS THE WORK 


117 

Lee, the walking boss, with Bob not far away, 
came to a small rock cut and stopped a few min- 
utes to watch the work. 

This cut was so small it would not have paid to 
put a steamshovel on it, and the rock was being 
taken out by hand. Some of the stone was 
being sent down to the crusher to be prepared 
for making concrete and a part was going to the 
fill. 

The rock was a hard limestone, in layers from 
three to four feet thick. At the start of the work 
the ledge had been covered with dirt to a depth of 
several feet. This dirt first had to be taken off 
with scrapers,' “ stripping,” it is called. 

Bob, wishing all the time that his chum was with 
him, watched the men making a narrow cut 
through this rock. The cut was too far away from 
the compressor for air drills to be used, and the 
drilling had to be done by hand, three men to a 
drill. Two of the men were hammerers and the 
other, the turner. The turner sat on the rock with 
a drill of one and one-fourth inch steel between 
his knees, which he held in place while his com- 
panions swung their heavy hammers. After every 
blow the turner turned the drill one-eighth around, 
in order to make a round hole. 

Water was put in the hole from time to time to 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


1 1 8 

take up the dust, otherwise but little progress 
could have been made. The hammering went on 
until a thick mud had formed at the bottom of the 
hole. The mud or “ sludge ” was then taken out 
with a drop-pipe. This pipe, having a valve in the 
end to prevent the mud from falling out, was put 
into the hole and chugged up and down. After 
the mud had been forced up into it, the pipe was 
pulled out and emptied. 

These drill holes were made about fifteen feet 
deep, to the bottom of the cut. They were 
“ sprung ” at the ends, as in tunnel work; then they 
were loaded with black powder — firecracker 
powder — instead of dynamite, from ten to twelve 
25-pound kegs of powder in each hole. Black 
powder burns slowly and throws off a large quan- 
tity of gas under low pressure. The effect of an 
explosion is as when a rubber balloon is blown so 
full of air that it bursts. 

Sometimes pieces of rock are blasted out which 
are too heavy for the men to handle. Such pieces 
have to be “ shot,” but drilling is not necessary. 
Then men “ doby the rock,” the word “ doby ” 
probably coming from “ adobe,” the mud material 
from which Mexican houses are made. The pro- 
cess also is called “ mud-capping ” and “ bull- 
dozing.” 


BOB INSPECTS THE WORK ng) 

To doby a rock, four sticks of dynamite are 
placed on the stone and covered with several 
shovelfuls of mud. Great care must be taken that 
no stones are left in that mud, to fly and cause 
trouble. A piece of fuse, about two feet long, 
leading down to the dynamite, is then lighted. 
This gives the men a minute in which to step back 
the fifty feet or more necessary for safety, as 
standard fuse burns at the rate of two feet per 
minute. 

The blow of the explosion breaks the rock be- 
fore the mud has time to get in motion. The in- 
terval is only a tiny fraction of a second, before the 
mud flies away in the form of powder, but in that 
fraction the rock is broken. 

With growing interest Bob watched the men 
who were about to doby a huge rock, taking care 
before the fuse was lighted to get far enough away 
to be out of danger. Bob was a cautious youngster, 
although brave enough when the occasion seemed 
to require courage. 

A workman lighted the fuse and started to run. 
Instead of taking a minute to burn, the fire sizzed 
down into the dynamite very rapidly. Before the 
man could get out of the way, a flying stone caught 
him between the shoulders and he dropped like a 
log. Fortunately he was not hurt beyond repair. 


120 THE TRAIL MAKERS 

although a week passed before he was able to work 

again. 

“ I thought you said fuse burned two feet a 
minute,” said Bob, after the man had been carried 
away. “ That went off in a hurry. Gee, I thought 
the guy would be killed.” 

“ That is what we all thought,” replied Lee, 
gravely, “ and he might have been. Joe, bring me 
a coil of fuse.” 

The foreman brought out a coil, containing one 
hundred feet of fuse, and the superintendent 
lighted one end. It burned rapidly. 

“ More deviltry,” muttered Lee to Mr. Vreeland. 
“ Somebody has wet that fuse and then dried it, 
or it wouldn’t burn like that.” 

“Joe,” to the foreman, “have you had any 
trouble with your men lately? ” 

“ Not to speak of except that I kicked one chap 
off the job a day or two ago. He had been beating 
a mule. Come to think of it, he did say something 
about getting even, but I didn’t pay much at- 
tention.” 

This was one of many things which prevented 
life from becoming monotonous to the young 
superintendent. 

“ Send up for some more fuse,” he ordered, “ and 


BOB INSPECTS THE WORK 


121 


test it carefully before using. We can’t spare any 
more of these men.” 

Before going on they paused at a blacksmith 
“ shop,” which stood beside the cut. The black- 
smith had rigged up a rough board shelter over- 
head. Here was a portable forge and tool box, a 
light anvil, a sack of coal, piles of horseshoes, 
nails, pieces of scrap-iron, etc. 

The blacksmith was a busy man. He had to 
sharpen the steel for the rock gang, make repairs 
for the scraper gang, and tighten up the shoes on 
the mules. After finishing the work there he 
would move on to some other part of the line 
where he was needed. 

They Jtound him pounding away and growling at 
the foreman, as usual. Seeing who his visitors 
were, he stopped long enough to ask Lee to send 
him a keg of mule shoes and then went on with his 
task. 

In this way the day passed. Not until evening 
did Bob finally steer Lizzie up to the office at 
Camp No. i and hasten to find out how Bill was 
getting on. 


CHAPTER XI 


A FARMER WITH SOFT HANDS 

“Bob” said Red one morning, “do you want to 
ride to town with me? I’ve got to chase up some 
coal. If we don’t get some pretty soon we’ll have 
to shut down.” 

“ Can Bill go, too?” 

“ Sure, I wouldn’t think of going without Bill/ 
We might get lost and need somebody to yell for 
help.” 

Bill came around the corner just in time to hear 
the last sentence. He drew in a long breath and 
opened his mouth, intending to give a screech that 
would be remembered in camp for a long time. 

Bob dodged out of the way, but Red grabbed a 
heavy piece of wood and threatened his friend so 
fiercely that Bill lost all his breath before he could 
get started, and the danger passed. From this it 
will be seen that the young man had fully recov- 
ered from the gas attack. 

It was a glorious morning and the boys rode 
along in silence for several minutes, drinking in the 
fragrance and beauty. 


122 


A FARMER WITH SOFT HANDS 123 

“ If we get out of coal,” said Red, finally, “ we’re 
going to fall down on that contract. The Gov- 
ernment is rushing us, as it is. Say, folks can talk 
all they want to about their being asleep in Wash- 
ington, but I tell you they’re doing things down 
there. I don’t know what they will say when they 
hear about last night.” 

“ Last night ! What happened? ” asked both the 
boys at once. 

“ Haven’t you heard? They had a rock slide 
over at the big cut. Five thousand cubic yards of 
stone slid into the cut during the night, almost 
burying the steamshovel. It’s lucky it happened 
between shifts or some one might have been hurt. 
George went over in the middle of the night. He 
came back for an early breakfast and to see about 
work here; then went back again. 

“ What made it slide?” asked Bob. 

“ That is the question. Of course, rock slides 
are nothing new, but they don’t happen very 
often. You see, there is a limestone ledge sloping 
at a sharp angle toward the cut and that ledge was 
holding an immense weight of sandstone. The 
sandstone slipped off. Somebody may have helped 
it slip, with a charge of dynamite, or it may have 
been an accident. Anyhow, we’ve got five thou- 
sand yards of rock to handle that we didn’t count 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


124 

on. George is going to work the men Sundays 
after this. Got to do it. When you go over you 
will be able to see the sloping ledge of limestone 
where the rock slipped off, George says.” 

“ I’ll bet Old Sneeze-twice had something to do 
with it,” exclaimed Bill. “ Little Willie will have 
to get on his trail again.” 

“ I don’t know, but it doesn’t look right. First 
that wop dropped his wrench into the gears of the 
shovel. Then came the meeting at the Hidden 
Hut, which you boys broke up, and the attack on 
you. Then those cars went through the trestle. 
Then thirty men quit in a bunch after pay-day. 
Now comes this rock slide, worse than all the rest. 
There is a hoodoo somewhere, believe me.” 

“ Let me tell you something else,” he continued, 
gloomily, after a moment. “ It’s a secret and 
George would give me Hail Columbia if he knew 
I had told; but a fellow has got to talk 
to somebody, and I know you will keep quiet 
about it.” 

“ Mum’s the word,” said Bill. 

“ I can’t remember anything over night,” Bob 
told him. “ My mother says so.” 

“ We have lost five hundred pounds of dyna- 
mite.” 


“ Lost it ! ” exclaimed Bob. “ Did it go off? ” 


A FARMER WITH SOFT HANDS 125 

“Well, not so that you could hear it; but it 
went off, just the same. It was stolen.’’ 

“How could anybody steal it?” asked Bill. 
“ There was a watchman on guard.” 

“ Yes, at night, and it doesn’t seem possible that 
any one could have gotten away with it in the day- 
time; but it is gone. Twenty 50-pound boxes of 
the stuff stood at one end of the powder house. I 
know it was there night before last, for I saw it 
myself. Last night I missed ten boxes. It wasn’t 
used on the work; we know that. It couldn’t very 
well have been taken during the night without the 
help of the watchman and it wouldn’t have been 
easy to take it during the day without being seen. 
Anyhow, it is gone, and that is all we know 
about it.” 

“ Great snakes ! What are they going to do with 
dynamite? ” 

“ That is what George would like to find out. 
Some of it may have been used on that rock slide. 
George doesn’t want anybody to know that we 
have missed the stuff and so couldn’t fire the 
watchman, but there will be a fellow we can trust 
watching the watchman every minute after this. 
If anybody else comes sneaking around after 
dark, we’ll find it out.” 


126 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


“ Why not track ’em the way we did What’s-his- 
name? ” 

“ That is a queer thing about it. The powder 
house stands, as you know, away from the camp, 
in the middle of a large clear space. The ground 
is hard in the center; in fact, it is rock, but when 
you get away from that it grows soft enough. 
They couldn’t have carried off that much dynamite 
without a team, and there isn’t a wheel track or 
the track of a horse anywhere around. I spent an 
hour looking.” 

“ Why, we don’t know what will happen,” said 
Bob. “ They may blow us all up. Betcher life, I 
am going to keep my eyes open.” 

“ You’ve got to,” said Red, earnestly. “ George 
is at his wits’ end. This is a big job for him to 
tackle, anyhow, even when things go right, and he 
can’t work any more than twenty-four hours a 
day. That is one reason why I told you. George 
is known from one end of the line to the other. So 
am I. But you two are not. You are just two 
boys having a good time. Boys can go anywhere 
and do anything, almost, and nobody thinks much 
about it. I am going to take you off the automo- 
bile, if George will let me, and give you a chance 
to scout around, as if you were playing. Keep 
your eyes open and your mouths shut. I'll keep 


A FARMER WITH SOFT HANDS 127 

my eyes open, too. Believe me, not one suspicious 
thing is going to get away from me.” 

“ Nor from us, either,” said Bob. “ I don’t know 
that we can find out anything but we’ll keep our 
eyes peeled, all right.” 

Having “ gotten his troubles off his chest,” as 
he explained, Red felt better, and the talk soon led 
to other matters. 

“ I have three nickels that are not working,” he 
said, a little later. “How about some pop?” 

They were passing a little cross-roads store 
where, according to a sign, there were soft drinks 
for sale within. 

“ Sounds good to me,” Bob told him. 

“ Here, too,” said Bill. 

A minute later they stood inside the store, each 
holding a bottle of ice-cold pop to his lips, tipped 
at the proper angle to do the most good in the 
least time. Just then a farmer’s wagon stopped in 
front. 

“Howdy, Mr. Uhlmann,” called the store- 
keeper. “We’ve got some of that cheese you-all 
wanted.” 

The farmer entered the little store and stood 
close to the boys while his cheese was being 
wrapped. Red finished his pop, glanced at the 
man carelessly at first, as one sometimes looks 


12* the trail makers 

at a stranger; then eyed him with growing in- 
terest. 

Greatly refreshed, after emptying their bottles, 
the boys climbed into their car and started on, but 
Red was strangely silent. He seemed to be think- 
ing about something. 

“ What’s on your mind, Red? ” asked Bill. “ Too 
much pop? ” 

“ That is not where I usually carry soda water, 
on my mind,” laughed Red. “ Maybe you boys 
will think I am crazy,” he continued, growing more 
serious as he talked, “ but I can’t get that farmer 
out of my head. Did you hear his name? It’s 
German.” 

“ So is Vreeland Dutch,” said Bob. “ I’ve got 
all kinds of ancestors and one of them happened to 
come from Holland. What of it? Some of the 
others came over in the Mayflower.” 

“ Which makes you a Spring Beauty — nit,” 
scoffed Bill. 

“ Or Dutchman’s Breeches,” more likely, smiled 
Red. “ They came through Holland.” 

“ It makes me straight American, that’s what it 
does,” said Bob, sturdily. “ Because a man has a 
German name, that is nothing. There are any 
number of good Americans with German names.” 

“ I suppose probably I am crazy,” said Red, “ but 


A FARMER WITH SOFT HANDS 


129 

it isn’t all his name. Did either of you notice his 
hands? ” 

“ Great snakes!” exclaimed Bill. “I did. The 
fellow had four fingers and a thumb on his right 
hand and only a thumb and four fingers on his left. 
I saw a German once and he was built the same 
way.” 

“ All right; laugh if you want to, but if that 
man is a farmer, he didn’t look it. His hands were 
soft and white, and his finger nails were nicely 
cared for. Did you ever see a farmer with soft, 
white hands and manicured nails, around this neck 
of the woods, especially?” 

The boys were obliged to confess that they never 
had and they began to regard Red’s suspicions 
more seriously. 

“ I noticed his hands, particularly,” went on that 
keen-eyed young man. “ Farmer nothing ! That 
chap never saw a plow, outside a picture book.” 

“ I am going back,” he decided, suddenly. “ I 
am going to find out something about that bird. 
There may nothing come of it, but it won’t hurt 
any, even if we keep our eyes open wider than 
necessary.” 

While speaking, he turned the car and soon was 
speeding back along the road to the little store. 

“You fellows stay with Lizzie,” he ordered, as 


130 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


they drove up. “ I’ll go in and get some bananas. 
I am sort of hungry for bananas, anyhow. There 
is no need of letting them know what we came 
back for.” 

A few minutes later he ran out, his hands full of 
fruit, which he divided into three parts, giving each 
boy his share. 

“ He’s a farmer, all right, according to what they 
say,” he explained, after the car had been turned 
around and was speeding down the road again. 
“ They told me that he was working a little farm 
several miles east of Camp No. i. He has been 
there six months and I’ll bet he hasn’t done a 
lick of farm work in all that time. There is no need 
to say anything to George until we know more 
about it, but, take it from me, that man is no more 
farmer than I am. I’ll bet money on it. He’ll bear 
watching.” 

“ Leave it to Little Willie ! ” exclaimed Bill, who 
was beginning to get excited. “ Bob and I will 
go fishing down his way. Won’t we, Bob? We 
ought to get acquainted with our neighbors, any- 
how, and we never have been very far east of 
camp.” 

Next day, armed with poles and tackle, Bob and 
Bill went “ fishing.” Red looked after them, wist- 
fully. He was still a boy, with all a boy’s love for 


A FARMER WITH SOFT HANDS 


131 

friends, and clean, outdoor sports, but there could 
be no fishing for him. He was taking a man’s 
place in the world, at a time when every minute 
counted and every man was needed. 

“ Keep your eyes peeled, fellows,” he had cau- 
tioned. “ Don’t let him suspect anything.” 

“ How would it do for me to give one yell under 
his window,” asked Bill, “ to kind of let him know 
we are around? ” 

“ If that is all you want to do,” Red grinned, 
“ stand where you are and do your yelling. I only 
wish I could go with you, but if you find anything 
out, maybe I’ll be able to get off for a couple of 
hours Sunday.” 

He watched the boys go down the road, then 
went back to work. 

“ This is my job, Bob,” Bill was saying, as they 
hurried along. “ You are great stuff when it comes 
to machinery and things like that. I’ll say so. I am 
not in it with you a-tall. But I’m the guy to track 
folks and don’t you forget it. Forward, and mum’s 
the word ! ” 


CHAPTER XII 


THE MYSTERIOUS MR. UHLMANN 

William Wilson, known to his friends as Bill, 
already had qualified as a First Class Boy Scout. 
His home was among the famous Berkshire Hills, 
in a beautiful valley which nestled between two 
mountain ranges in northwestern Massachusetts. 
A steep hill, called Bob’s Hill by the boys who 
played there, arose almost in the midst of his home 
village. It was one of the foothills of Greylock, 
the highest mountain in the state, which looked 
down on the village from the west. 

There, in the valley of Hoosic River and on the 
surrounding hills and mountains, Bill had prac- 
tised his Scout stunts, along with “ Skinny ” Miller, 
Benny Wade, and the other Bob’s Hill boys, under 
the direction of a splendid scoutmaster, drinking in 
many lessons not to be found in books and learning 
how to take care of himself at all times. 

To think quickly and act quickly come natural 
to most American boys, brought up in the freedom 
and spirit of a great democracy. This was espe- 
cially true of Bill, who was all boy and an ardent 


132 


THE MYSTERIOUS MR. UHLMANN 133 

young patriot. With him to think was to act, as 
was shown by the manner of his escape from the 
Hidden Hut. In fact, he sometimes had been 
guilty of acting first and doing his thinking after- 
ward, as was the case at the tunnel. 

Once he had sprained an ankle badly, when at 
the very top of Greylock. He had climbed the 
mountain alone, during one of his Scout stunts, 
something which he should not have done. No one 
had the least idea where to look for him, when he 
failed to return at the expected time, and until 
long afterward. While half the village were 
searching for the lost boy, although badly crip- 
pled and nearly famished for food and water, Bill 
managed to build a fire on the brow of the moun- 
tain peak and to send up a smoke signal, learned in 
his Scout work. His signal finally was seen by the 
other members of Raven Patrol, looking for him 
in the valley below, and he was rescued. 

Again, he and a game bunch of Boy Scouts were 
caught in a terrible storm on the Hoosac range 
opposite, while climbing over the mountain, and 
forced to spend the night in separated groups on 
the summit. Bill, in command of one group, 
calmly stripped some dry and rotted wood from the 
interior of a hollow tree, and built ^a fire, before 
which their dripping garments were hung. Then, 


134 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


after the ground had been thoroughly dried be- 
neath, the hot ashes were scattered and, lying down 
in the cleared place, snug and warm, they slept the 
sleep of healthy boyhood. They were as safe as 
in their beds at home, although their parents down 
in the valley, not knowing where they were, 
naturally were nearly frantic with anxiety. 

These adventures and many others have been 
duly set down by the patrol scribe for the benefit 
of those who care to read. While not a part of this 
story, they will help to a proper understand- 
ing of the youngster who so naturally took the 
leadership in this little trip, to find out about the 
doings of a certain, soft-handed farmer, with man- 
icured finger nails and a German name. 

The dew still was on grass and leaves when the 
boys made their way along a country road, which, 
by some chance, they never had explored before. 

“ I don’t see any place to fish/’ said Bob, “ but 
we’ll put up a bluff, anyhow.” 

Without stopping, they passed several log 
cabins, rightly judging from the looks of the places 
that those who lived there would have hands 
hardened by toil, and probably soiled, in the bar- 
gain. 

Then after a long walk they saw ahead of them a 
little better house than the others. It was clap- 


THE MYSTERIOUS MR. UHLMANN 135 

boarded and painted. The barn, too, was better 
built than the ordinary barns in that part of the 
state. Back of the house stood a pump, and high 
above the pump was a water tank. 

“ Some class to that, Bob,” said Bill. “ Running 
water in the house and all that sort of thing. I 
wonder if this can be the place.” 

“ Don’t stare,” cautioned Bob. “ Walk along as 
if you were in a hurry to get to the fishing place. 
We’ll look at the mailbox as we go by. Maybe his 
name is on it.” 

They did so, and there, painted on the box as 
plain as day, was the name, “ Uhlmann.” 

The boys hadn’t expected to find the place so 
easily, and now that they had found it didn’t know 
what to do next. 

“ Keep going,” said Bill. “ That is the best 
thing to do. As soon as we get out of sight we’ll 
stop and talk things over.” 

It was more of a problem than they had thought 
at first. Even should they be able to get into the 
house by making some excuse, they wouldn’t know 
any more than Red had found out by seeing the 
man at the cross-roads store. 

“ I don’t know what to do,” confessed Bill, 
frankly, after the boys had thrown themselves 
down in the shade of a bush by the roadside. 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


136 

“ There isn’t anything we can do, anyhow, is there, 
except watch? Let’s circle around to a point 
where we can see the house and then keep a sharp 
look-out. Maybe something will happen.” 

Keeping out of sight in a winding ravine, the 
boys at length succeeded in finding a shady place 
overlooking the house, where they could see with- 
out being seen. Twice they saw Mr. Uhlmann 
come out of the house and look down the road. 

“ He is expecting somebody,” Bill decided. 
“ Maybe it’s Old Sneeze-twice. If it is I’m going 
to hit him with a rock.” 

“ No, it’s the mail carrier. See, there he comes 
now.” 

The carrier drove up, stopped at the box, and 
went his way. Then the man of the house came 
out, unlocked his box, took out his letters, and 
went in again. That was the only sign of life they 
could see. 

“ This ain’t much fun,” said Bill, after an hour 
had passed and nothing more had happened. “ I 
want to be doing something. Let’s go over and 
ask for a drink, anyhow. I’m getting thirsty and 
that water tank looks good to me.” 

“ Do you see anything queer about it, Bill?” 
asked Bob, who had been staring at the tank for 
some time. 


THE MYSTERIOUS MR. UHLMANN 137 

“ Why, no,” confessed Bill, gazing across at it, 
earnestly. “ It’s just a water tank, and a new one. 
Do you see anything? ” 

“ No-o, not much,” hesitated Bob, “ only I never 
saw a water tank with guy wires before. What’s 
the use of guy wires to hold up a water 
tank? ” 

Bill looked again. Yes, Bob was right. The 
tank stood on a platform which had been built high 
above the pump. A guy wire stretched from the 
side of the tank away from the house, to a post 
driven in the ground. On the other side three 
strands of wire ran loosely down from the tank to 
the house, near the ground, where they seemed to 
be fastened. 

“ You are ’most as bad as Red, with his talk 
about soft hands,” said Bill, after he had looked, 
although it was plain that he was greatly inter- 
ested. “ The tank has guy wires, all right. What 
of it? ” 

“ That is what I can’t make out.” 

“ I’ll tell you. It’s on account of the wind. The 
wind blows like sixty down here sometimes. I 
thought it was going to blow our tent away one 
night.” 

“ Maybe you are right,” said Bob, “ but those 
guy wires wouldn’t be much help. Red told us to 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


138 

notice anything at all unusual, anyhow, and I never 
saw anything like that before.” 

“ That is so,” replied Bill, “ but he told us, don’t 
you remember? not to try to do anything ourselves 
except to keep our eyes peeled and report to him. 
Anybody has a right to fasten his water tank with 
guy wires if he wants to, even if it is foolish, but 
we’ll tell Red about it, just the same.” 

“ I’ve got it,” he exclaimed in excitement, for- 
getting all about being thirsty as a new thought 
came to him. “ Do you remember that horse you 
rode back to camp from the Hidden Hut and which 
somebody took away in the night? Maybe here is 
where it belongs. Let’s take a peep into that 
barn.” 

“We’d be in a nice fix if they caught us at it,” 
objected Bob, remembering what had happened 
when they were found under the window at the 
hut. “ I wish we had seen who the guys were that 
time. Wernski was the only one we saw real 
plain.” 

“ We’ve got to do something,” urged Bill. 
“ We’ve got to make good somehow and we 
haven’t found out anything yet except about those 
crazy guy wires, and they ain’t much. Come on; 
we can sneak around behind the barn and, if they 
catch us at it, can pretend to be looking for a lost 


THE MYSTERIOUS MR. UHLMANN 139 

mule, or something. One of the mules did get 
away from camp; I heard George say so.” 

Bob didn't need much urging. Together the 
boys soon were making their way in a wide circle, 
until they were able to approach the barn from the 
back, through the fields, out of sight from the 
house. After waiting a few minutes to make sure 
they had not been seen, they slipped inside. 

“ If he’s here he isn’t in the barn,” said Bob, 
under his breath, when he felt certain the horse 
was not there. 

Just then a chip, thrown from behind, struck him 
on one shoulder. When he looked around Bill was 
standing at one end of the barn, beckoning to 
him. 

“ What sort of thing do you call that?” whis- 
pered Bill, when his friend had come close. 

It was a queer looking machine which Bob saw, 
reminding him of a great bird with folded wings, 
and his excitement grew as he looked. 

“ It’s some kind of airplane ! ” he exclaimed. a I 
saw one once, but this is different.” 

“ Great snakes!” gasped Bill. “A farmer with 
soft hands and an airplane ! That is going some.” 

“ Bob ! ” he almost shouted in his excitement, as 
a new thought hit him. “ The dynamite ! That 
is why Red couldn’t find any tracks.” 


140 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


“ Sh-h-h, you crazy mutt. Somebody will hear 
you,” cautioned Bob, just as excited. 

“ Keep watch,” was Bill’s only reply. “ I’m 
going to hunt for that dynamite. Don’t let them 
catch me at it.” 

He couldn’t find anything which looked like the 
missing boxes and soon returned. 

“ The stuff isn’t in the barn,” he said, “but that 
is no sign Uhlmann didn’t take it. I don’t think 
we’d better look any farther. It’s time we were 
getting out of here. Say, we’ve got something to 
tell Red, anyhow, and it will make his eyes stick 
out.” 

Cautiously they made their way out of the barn 
at the back and stole across the fields into the 
woods beyond. When finally they had reached the 
shelter of the ravine and felt safe, they gave a sigh 
of relief. 

Bill was greatly elated at his discovery of the air- 
plane. He stood on his hands and kicked, going 
through the motions of yelling, but making no 
noise, which was remarkable for him. 

“ There is something rotten somewhere,” he 
said, after he had come back to a standing position. 
“ When a farmer has soft hands and an airplane, 
too, and in war time, look out; that’s all I’ve got 
to say. I didn’t think much of the soft-hand busi- 



“What Kind of a Machine Do You Call That?” 








THE MYSTERIOUS MR. UHLMANN 141 

ness at first, but this is different Say, Red will be 
crazy when he hears about this. ,, 

The gong was ringing for dinner when they 
came within sight of camp, and a welcome sound it 
was to the hungry and excited boys. They hurried 
in, but found that their usual seats had been taken 
by some traveling salesmen. The boys had not 
been expected back so soon. They were too busy 
to talk during the next few minutes, anyhow, but 
between mouthfuls Bill made some remarkable 
signs to let Red know they had something very 
important to tell him, much to that young man’s 
wonder. 

“ Red, old scout,” he shouted, after the three 
boys had gone off by themselves, “we’ve done the 
trick. Didn’t I tell you to leave it to Little 
Willie?” 

“ Did you really find out something? ” asked 
Red, catching the excitement. 

“Did we? Say, did we, Bob? O, no; maybe 
not” 

“Well, what did you find? ” 

“ Bob, you break it to him. You know all about 
machinery.” 

“We think we have found out how the dyna- 
mite was stolen,” said Bob. “ Your farmer with 
soft hands has an airplane in his barn. I think it 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


142 

is a foreign one. It’s like a picture I saw once of a 
kind that is used in Europe.” 

Red opened his mouth to speak; then closed it 
again, so great was his astonishment, while Bill 
watched him with pride and delight. 

“ An airplane ! ” finally gasped the young man. 
“ Wait.” 

“ O, George,” he called, as he caught sight of 
the superintendent, hurrying back to his office. 
“ Come over here a minute.” 

Lee saw the boys and hastened over. 

“ Did you get any fish? ” he asked. 

“ We know where there is a big one,” Bill told 
him, “ but we haven’t caught him yet.” 

The boys laughed so loudly at this simple remark 
that Lee looked puzzled. 

“ Anyhow, it is something to know where the 
fish are,” he replied. “What do you want, Red? 
I must go back to work, and you’d better get 
busy on that payroll pretty soon.” 

But before his young assistant had spoken ten 
words work had been forgotten. Beginning with 
the trip after coal, Red told the story — about see- 
ing Uhlmann at the store, hearing his name, and 
noticing that the man’s hands were unused to 
work, although he pretended to be a farmer, and 


THE MYSTERIOUS MR. UHLMANN 143 

finally of the discovery of an airplane in Uhlmann’s 
barn. 

“Bob noticed something else, too; didn’t you, 
Bob?” Bill added, after Red had finished. “It 
wasn’t much, but Red said for us to notice every- 
thing unusual and tell him about it. It was the 
first time we ever saw anything like that. Uhl- 
mann has a water tank in his back yard and it is 
fastened to the house with guy wires.” 

“ Wires? ” shouted Lee. Then, controlling him- 
self, 

“ Boys, keep this thing under your hats, all of 
you. I’ll be too busy today and tomorrow, even to 
think about it, but Sunday I’ll take a few hours off 
and go over there. I want a look at that airplane 
and those guy wires.” 


CHAPTER XIII 


“ SWEET LAND OF LIBERTY ” 

Sunday came and went, however, without the trip 
to Uhlmann’s which Lee had planned. The rock 
slide, which had come so near burying both steam- 
shovel and crew, required close attention and made 
Sunday a work day for all. 

While a short absence on Lee’s part would not 
Seriously interfere with his duties, he felt obliged 
to stay within easy reach every minute. There 
had been much grumbling already over the 
prospect of a Sunday shift. 

Moreover, after a good night’s rest, the Uhl- 
mann affair did not seem so important as when he 
first heard the story. The task before him de- 
manded his entire attention. 

“ Uhlmann will keep,” he told the boys. “ He 
isn’t going to run away. Besides, I do not feel 
certain that there is anything wrong or that he has 
had anything to do with our troubles. There are 
many gentlemen farmers with soft hands.” 

“ Not around here,” urged Red. “ If any one 
makes a living from a few acres of land around 
here he’s got to work.” 


144 


“ SWEET LAND OF LIBERTY 


“ Maybe he is making ‘ moonshine whiskey.’ 
That used to be a flourishing industry in these 
parts.” 

“ What would he be doing with an airplane, a 
foreign one, at that? ” 

“ That is something I can not tell you. I’ll 
promise you this much. I’ll go over and look into 
it, after we get our Sunday shift to running 
smoothly and I can leave. Meanwhile, we must 
keep our eyes wide open. That missing dyna- 
mite is somewhere and it was stolen for some 
purpose.” 

“ Why couldn’t I go over with Bob and Bill? ” 

“ You could get away, of course, more easily 
than I could, but I want to go, anyhow, and study 
the layout for myself. If the man is a crook, or a 
spy, it might scare him away to have so much in- 
terest shown in his place. I think it will be better 
for all of us to keep away entirely until I can go 
myself.” 

The boys were obliged to content themselves 
with this promise, although they were greatly dis- 
appointed. 

There was another reason why Lee did not want 
to be away on the first working Sunday. Satur- 
day evening after supper the men of the day shift 
gathered in front of the contractor’s office, accord- 


1 46 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


ing to the superintendent’s request, and Sunday 
morning there was to be a similar meeting of the 
night shift. Lee felt that the time had come to 
explain to the men the importance of the work 
which they were doing. 

It was a rough looking crowd which faced the 
superintendent, when he stepped out on the little 
platform at the office entrance. 

“ This isn’t a white-shirt job,” Red had explained 
to his mother, when she had urged him to pay 
more attention to his clothes. “ When I want to 
dress up all I have to do is to part my hair in the 
middle.” 

There were many nations represented in that 
throng. Men from Italy were there; men from 
Greece and from the Balkans; from Austria; prob- 
ably not a few were of German parentage. Back 
of the others and at one side stood a group of 
negroes, although comparatively little negro labor 
was being used except in team work. 

Being from the North, Mr. Vreeland preferred 
white labor. For some reason a Northern man 
seems unable to handle the Southern blacks. To 
Lee, himself a Virginian, this would not have been 
a difficulty, but the high wages offered with the 
backing of the Government so far had attracted 
the needed white labor. 


SWEET LAND OF LIBERTY 


But rough clothes, hardened hands, and lack of 
education often conceal real manhood, and that 
Lee well knew. 

As the superintendent stepped out and faced the 
crowd, the men stopped talking and all eyes were 
turned toward him. 

“ Before I start,” began the young man, pleas- 
antly, “ IT1 ask Red Hurley to pass these boxes of 
cigars. You might help him, Shumway, but I want 
Red in particular because it would be impossible 
to lose sight of his head in a crowd, and I want 
everybody to get a cigar.” 

A laugh went up at this shot at Red’s flaming 
hair, in which the young man joined with the 
others. The color of his hair was the least of his 
troubles. 

“ There are parts of your head,” Red once had 
told Lee, who was trying to console his assistant 
by explaining that red hair was becoming; — 
“ there are parts of your head where any old hair 
would be becoming.” 

He was referring to a growing thin spot in the 
engineer’s hair which was causing some anxiety. 
The joke was greatly appreciated and had not been 
forgotten. 

“ A good cigar,” Lee went on, “ often paves the 
way for good-will and good-fellowship, and, men, I 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


148 

need your good-will and help, and the country 
needs your good-will and help, as never before. 

“ I need your good-will, personally, because I 
have tackled a big job, bigger than I thought when 
I undertook it. I am not sure that I am the man 
for the place, but I happen to be here and I am 
doing the best I can. As many of you know, I am 
working about seventeen hours out of the twenty- 
four; but it is only through your work and co- 
operation that I can accomplish anything worth 
while. 

“ What I want to say to you in particular is that 
in doing good work for me you are doing good 
work for the United States of America and those 
ideals for which this country stands and in which 
you and I believe. I see before me many men who 
were not born in this country. Why did you come 
to America, men? Was it not for two things, 
which are lacking in some of the old-world coun- 
tries, — liberty and opportunity? 

“ For more than a century the United States has 
been offering liberty and opportunity to all who 
wish to cross the Atlantic and join the great Amer- 
ican family. What a family it is that Uncle Sam 
has gathered together! From all parts of the 
earth they have come, to enjoy the freedom and 
comforts and opportunity found under the Amer- 


SWEET LAND OF LIBERTY 


ican flag. Men, Uncle Sam needs his children now ; 
he needs you ; he asks you to do the great work 
which must be done in his preparation for war. 

“ This railroad which we are building is an im- 
portant part of war preparation. There are rea- 
sons why it must be completed in record time and 
why enemies of this country would like to hold 
back the work. There are reasons why the Gov- 
ernment of the United States is willing to pay you 
big wages, the highest wages labor ever has re- 
ceived anywhere in the world, asking only that 
you in turn shall put every ounce of energy which 
you have into the work. 

“ That is why I have been driving you so hard. 
That is why tomorrow we shall begin to work a 
Sunday shift. The quicker we can finish this rail- 
road, the sooner the United States can get in shape 
to defeat the greatest force for evil ever let loose 
on earth, — the military caste of Prussia, which 
seeks to rule and enslave the world. I want you 
to feel that every drill hole which you sink in the 
rock; every car of material which goes to the 
dump; every honest hour of labor on your part, is 
a blow struck in defense of liberty; — not only your 
liberty and mine and the liberty of all other Amer- 
icans, but the liberty of your own folks in the Old 
Country, the liberty of small nations everywhere, 


150 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


who are struggling to free themselves from that 
old, worn-out theory of the ‘ divine right of kings ’ 
to rule people against their will. And let me tell 
you one thing, Uncle Sam, having taken up the 
sword, never will lay it down until the thing which 
he has set out to do has been done. You can bet 
your last dollar on that. 

“ Now, men, I am going to ask you to join me 
in singing the opening verse of 4 America.’ As 
some of you may not be familiar with the words, 
I’ll recite them first: 

“ My country, ’tis of thee, 

Sweet land of liberty. 

Of thee I sing; — 

Land where my fathers died, 

Land of the Pilgrim’s pride, 

From every mountain-side 
Let Freedom ring.” 

He began to sing in a rich baritone and with 
great feeling. The men, hesitating at first, grew 
more confident as the song went on and ended the 
verse with a great volume of sound and not a little 
music. 

Then came an incident not on the program. As 
the last words died away, Bob, who had disap- 
peared during the singing, rushed out upon the 
platform at Lee’s side, waving an American flag. 


“ SWEET LAND OF LIBERTY” 151 

There was a mighty cheer, as the men caught the 
meaning; then silence, for the engineer had raised 
one hand as a sign that he had something more 
to say. 

“ ‘ Sweet land of liberty ’ is right, men. No one 
knows what that means better than you hard-work- 
ing fellows who have come here from foreign 
lands that you might have a chance. Such a coun- 
try is worth fighting for and when this job of rail- 
road building is finished George Lee will go to the 
front and fight there for that liberty which we all 
love. Until then I shall continue to fight here, 
with all my heart, with all my soul and with all my 
strength, so help me, God. This railroad is going 
to be finished in time. Will you fight with me? ” 

“We will,” came back in a mighty chorus. 

“Good! Now we understand each other. This 
is war, and we all are fighters. We want no 
slackers here, men. If there be any who is not 
willing to strike a blow for the United States and 
liberty let him come to my office tomorrow, re- 
ceive his money, and then get off the job. I give 
you my word I am going to work you and myself 
to the limit, until Uncle Sam has the use of this 
railroad.” 

After the men had scattered Lee sat alone in his 
office, still thrilled with the emotions which his talk 


152 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


had called up and which he had tried to make his 
fellow-workers feel. 

“Well, Jack,” said he, as the big shovel-runner 
entered. “ How did it go? ” 

“Fine! You got ’em coming. They will stay 
with you, most of them, to the finish.” 

“ Did you scatter your men among the crowd? ” 
“ Bet your life I did, and here is a list of the 
slackers. We may not have caught them all, but 
you can tell pretty well at a time like that who is 
with you and who against.” 

“Good work! We’ll find some excuse for let- 
ting these go gradually. Meanwhile, have your 
men keep a close watch on them.” 

The weeks passed and the work drove on furi- 
ously. One day was much like another and there 
was little difference between day and night in the 
yardage moved. Lee was as good as his word. 
He worked his men to the limit, but, hard as they 
worked, they knew that their superintendent was 
working still harder. In the midst of the rush and 
turmoil the mysterious Mr. Uhlmann almost was 
forgotten. 


CHAPTER XIV 


THE PLOTTERS 

There were signs of unusual activity at the little 
house, to which “ the busy B’s,” Bob and Bill, had 
tracked the mysterious farmer. 

That worthy himself still displayed the same 
well-kept hands and nails which had aroused the 
suspicions of Red Hurley, and each of those hands 
still had four fingers and a thumb, as noticed by 
William Wilson, the boy sleuth. 

These hands now were being waved violently up 
and down, as the owner directed two early morning 
visitors into the house, talking earnestly the while 
in German. Had any one been passing, if he 
thought about the matter at all, he would have 
thought that the farmer and his men were getting 
ready for work in the fields. 

But had Bill been peeking through a friendly 
window about that time, where, you may be sure, 
he would have given his eye teeth to be, although 
he would not have been able to understand a single 
word that was spoken, he would have seen that 


153 


154 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


one of the visitors was Wernski, as he usually was 
called, the discharged workman who had dropped 
his wrench into the gears of the steamshovel. Bill 
had named him “ Old Sneeze-twice.” 

The second man, called Schmidt by his two com- 
panions, was unknown to the boys. 

Bill, however, all unconscious of what he was 
missing, was several miles away at Camp No. i. 
It happened that the two boys were resting from 
the labors of the breakfast table at that very 
moment, and planning a trip on the morrow to the 
new bridge. The concrete abutments and pier had 
been finished, ready for the steel spans which 
would carry the railroad across the creek and 
ravine, a short distance beyond the south portal 
of the tunnel. 

“ You picked up my message, I see! ” said Uhl- 
mann, motioning the men to seats. 

Schmidt nodded. “ Ja. You called us. We are 
here.” 

“ You are prompt. Have they missed the dyna- 
mite at Camp No. i ? ” 

• “ There hasn’t been a word said about it and our 
man is still on guard. We could carry off all the 
stuff they have on hand, and will if you say the 
word.” 

“ Nein! Nein! ” exclaimed Uhlmann. “ Enough 


THE PLOTTERS 


i55 


is enough. We have plenty for the present. If 
you take too much they will miss it.” 

“ You shot the slide,” he continued, rubbing his 
hands together, gleefully. “ I heard about it, even 
down here. Didn’t I tell you it could be done? I 
examined that cut one Sunday and knew from the 
looks of the ledge that a few pounds of dynamite 
in the right place would do the job. Five thousand 
yards of stone in the cut! I wish the whole camp 
had been buried under it.” 

“ That fellow, Lee, will be buried under some 
just like it, and so will Shumway, before I get 
through with them,” growled Wernski. 

“ You will do just what I tell you, no more and 
no less,” said Uhlmann, coldly, “ and if you bungle 
this time as you did with the shovel, you will wish 
you never had been born.” 

“ Remember,” he went on, as the other began to 
mutter, “ I am your superior officer, even if this 
isn’t Germany — yet. You bungled that other time; 
you know you did. You would be worth ten times 
as much to the Fatherland if you still held your 
job at the camp. As it is now, it isn’t safe for you 
to be hanging around these parts and I may have 
to send you away. We’ll get those fellows later, 
never fear, but just now we have something else 
to do.” 


156 THE TRAIL MAKERS 

Wernski sank back in his chair, although still 
scowling. 

“The time has come?” the leader asked, turn- 
ing to Schmidt. 

“ Ja, now is the time. Of course, it would do 
more damage could we wait until they get the 
steel on.” 

“We can’t risk it. Something might happen 
while we were waiting and keep us from doing any- 
thing.” 

“ Then the time has come. They finished the 
north abutment a week ago and the gang moved 
to another part of the work. Yesterday they took 
the forms off. Until the steel arrives there will 
be no one around nearer than the tunnel.” 

“ Blow them up tonight then. It will be easy, 
for they suspect nothing. How long will it 
take?” 

“ With good luck we should be able to drill the 
holes in from three to four hours. The concrete 
is new.” 

“ Good. To play safe you’d better not start 
until after midnight.” 

“ Right. The night shift at th*e tunnel eats about 
that time. Some of them might hear the noise 
when the work shuts down. We could blow up 
the whole state and they wouldn’t hear it, with 


THE PLOTTERS 


157 

those air drills going. I’d like to use one of them 
on the abutments for a few minutes.” 

“Have you the dynamite safe? ” 

“ Enough to blow up a half dozen abutments.” 

“ Don’t use more than is necessary. There will 
be other work to do.” 

“ It will be some time before trains run over 
that bridge,” he added, grimly. 

“ They will build them up again,” Schmidt told 
him. “ You’ll see. Lee is a driver, I’ll say that 
much for him. He gets things done.” 

“Even so; you’ll have dynamite left; and am I 
not here to plan? Other things may happen. I 
shouldn’t wonder if the tunnel would cave in about 
the time they get it done. Tunnels have been 
known to cave in, I have been told.” 

“ It would be quite a help to the Fatherland,” 
he went on, after a moment, “ if it should happen 
to cave in while Vreeland and Lee, and maybe that 
torch light procession they call Red, were inside 
looking at it. They would have some trouble get- 
ting out. Yes, I think they would have some 
trouble getting out.” 

Wernski’s face lighted up savagely. He nodded 
to Schmidt and looked with admiration at his chief. 

“ Here is the situation,” explained Uhlmann, so 
pleased with himself that for the moment he 


158 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


warmed up to his men. “ I have orders to hinder 
the building of this railroad and that is what we 
are going to do. It does not matter why; there is 
some good reason for it. 

“ These swine over here think they can wage 
war against Germany. We’ll show them. I am 
only one, but there are hundreds of thousands of 
us in this country. The Fatherland has eyes and 
ears everywhere. They can not make a move with- 
out our finding it out. It was so in peace time and it 
will be so in war. Only now we must be more 
careful.” 

He glanced out of the window at the water tank, 
with its guy wires, set high over the pump, and 
lowered his ^oice. 

“ Our plan is a success,” he exulted, “ as I knew 
it would be. It works. Soon there will be water 
tanks all over the country, down on the Mexican 
border, especially. Farmers need water tanks for 
their stock and this is a good tank and cheap, — 
oh, so cheap to the right buyer. Even now we 
have agents on the road selling them to the peo- 
ple; but they are careful agents. Only Germans 
buy. For the others, the price is too high. 

“ Soon all friends of the Fatherland will be able 
to talk, one to another, without being seen or 
heard. Then — word will pass down the line and 


THE PLOTTERS 


159 


we shall act. Bridges will blow up. Tunnels will 
cave in. Factories will burn. Ships will sink. 
Workmen will strike. Industry everywhere will be 
paralyzed. 

“ My orders are to delay war preparations in any 
way possible and at any cost. The cost is nothing. 
It all will be paid back by our enemies, and more. 
We collected many times the cost of the war of 
1870, and we’ll do it again. All the Fatherland 
needs is time. Our armies are victorious on the 
east front. France has been bled white. The ac- 
cursed English are on their last legs. Austria is 
able to handle Italy. If we can hold back these 
fool Americans a few months, burn their factories 
and sink their troop ships, we shall be able to dic- 
tate peace to Europe from Paris and London.” 

He had raised his voice; his eyes glowed as with 
fire at the prospect, and he paced the floor like a 
caged tiger. 

“ Then,” he snarled, “ watch what we’ll do to 
this country. They would make war on Germany, 
would they, these dogs! They might as well try 
to conquer Heaven itself. Germany — the Father- 
land — it is more than a nation. It is a force of 
nature, resistless, without pity, crushing all who 
stand in the way.” 


160 THE TRAIL MAKERS 

The fierce fire of enthusiasm which had shot 
from his eyes died away as suddenly as it had come. 
Once more he was the cool, calculating, stony- 
faced Teuton, like the force of nature he had de- 
scribed. 

“ Now, go,” he commanded. “ The Fatherland 
depends on you and will reward you well; but no 
bungling, remember. Germany has no use for 
bunglers.” 

Midnight came. Out from the tunnel heading 
hurried the muckers. Out came the hardy fellows 
who had been drilling their way into the hill of 
rock, the watershed of Western Tennessee. 

The noise of the rapid-fire drills had ceased. All 
nature seemed at rest and peace, as the tired men 
threw themselves on the ground to eat their 
lunches and take a pull at their pipes. 

The night foreman, Irish like Cassidy, passed 
from group to group, giving words of encourage- 
ment. 

“ Ye did well, byes,” he said. “ Four and a half 
feet is not bad work, and we can make it five more 
come morning. At the rate we are going we’ll 
soon have the extra money to divide.” 

As he finished speaking came the sound of a 
muffled explosion from within the heading, as an- 


THE PLOTTERS 


161 


other round of shots went off, tearing loose some 
tons of rock for the muckers to handle after their 
rest. 

Twelve-thirty o’clock. Into your hole, men. 
Back to your toil. More than a money bonus de- 
pends on your energy and faithfulness. The fate 
of civilization hangs in the balance. Human lib- 
erty is at stake. With your help and the help of 
toiling millions like you, a great Nation of free 
men, rousing at last from slumber, is stretching 
forth mighty arms in preparation for a conflict, 
which is to change the map of Europe and shake 
the proud Kaiser from his throne. 

One o’clock. The noise of the drills is deafening 
to those who are near. Out from the heading come 
a constant procession of small tunnel cars, heaped 
up by the muckers from the results of the recent 
blast. Out to the fill steam the large dump cars 
as fast as loaded. Every man is on tiptoe to make 
a record during the night’s work, and has neither 
eyes nor ears for anything which may be going on 
beyond the outer circle of darkness. 

Through that darkness two silent figures stole 
toward the completed abutments. The wooden 
forms and the machinery had been moved and the 
abutments stood there clean, in all the perfection 
of new concrete, waiting for the hardening process 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


162 

to make them like granite. A low-hanging moon 
enabled the men to pick their way, but failed to 
reveal them to the workers at the tunnel’s mouth, 
although the lights from the heading were visible 
from across the valley. 

“ We’ll start on this one,” ordered Schmidt, 
when the south abutment was reached, for the two 
men were the plotters to whom Uhlmann had given 
the dastardly work of the night. 

He selected a spot with practised eye, a few feet 
above the base of the structure, on the side away 
from the tunnel, and marked it for their guidance. 

The drill was a bar of inch and a half steel about 
fifteen feet long, pointed at one end. It would not 
have been safe to use a short drill and hammer; the 
noise might have been heard. Ordinarily one of 
the men would have held such a drill in place, 
turning it a little after each blow, while the other 
swung the hammer. 

The two men grasped the bar and struck the 
pointed end against the abutment at the spot 
selected. They worked carefully at first, until a 
hole in the concrete became well marked and they 
had caught the swing of their task, then drove the 
drill into the hole with great force, turning the bar 
a little after each stroke. Occasionally they 
stopped to rest and to clean out the deepening hole* 


THE PLOTTERS 163 

Clung! clung! went the steel bar, hurled into the 
concrete by powerful arms, and the hissing breath 
of the men on the downward stroke told of the 
force of the blow. The sound was very different 
from the rattling gun-fire of the air drills, and prog- 
ress seemed slow. Hand-drilling is a tedious job 
at best, even in new concrete. 

Finally, the first hole was deep enough to suit 
the plans of Schmidt. It extended into the abut- 
ment slantingly in a downward direction, like the 
hole of a great snake, and was about four feet 
deep. Such holes, in fact, are known as “ snake 
holes ” to the blasting gang. 

“Ten pounds will do it,” calculated Schmidt. 
“ Now to spring the hole.” 

Precisely as the men in the tunnel heading were 
making their drill holes larger at the bottom, the 
hole in the abutment was “ sprung.” After each 
shot the men waited and watched, ready to dis- 
appear should their work have been heard. 

When the hole was in shape for the loading the 
men drilled three others, then hastened to the other 
abutment. They were in a hurry to finish before 
the moon sank out of sight. 

Chug, chug, soon went the drill again, boring its 
way into the second abutment as it had done into 
the first. 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


164 

Suddenly, after an unusually heavy blow, there 
were exclamations of dismay; the noise stopped. 
There had been some flaw in the structure of the 
steel and the bar had broken. 

Schmidt growled his impatience and vexation. 
“We’ll have to finish tomorrow night,” he de- 
cided. “We can’t get another drill in time for 
tonight. One night is as good as another; but I 
don’t know what the captain will say. Anyhow, 
it can’t be helped.” 

“ Somebody may see the holes in the daytime,” 
objected Wernski. 

“ I’ll soon fix that.” 

Looking around, he found a pail partly filled with 
grout, a thin cement, with which workmen had 
been smoothing the walls of the abutments. It was 
an easy matter to plug the holes and wash them 
over with the grout, until they looked like the re- 
mainder of the structure. 

“ That will do for tonight,” he said, when he had 
finished. “ No one will suspect that the holes are 
there. We’d have some trouble finding them our- 
selves if I hadn’t marked the spots.” 

This done, they picked up the broken drill, shoul- 
dered the boxes of dynamite and stole away, leav- 
ing no trace of what they had been doing. 

“ Tomorrow night will do well enough,” mut- 


THE PLOTTERS 165 

tered Schmidt to his companion, “ but I don’t 
know what the captain will say.” 

Had Lee himself visited the bridge the next 
morning he would have seen nothing to awaken his 
suspicions that everything was not as left by the 
concrete gang. The abutments and pier would 
have been a joy to the earnest young engineer, as 
he gazed. In spite of the broken drill, it seemed as 
if Uhlmann had been right when he said that it 
would be some time before a train would run over 
that bridge. 


CHAPTER XV 


BILL MAKES A DISCOVERY 

A great commotion might have been heard the 
next morning in the tent occupied by Robert Vree- 
land, Jr., and William Wilson, his chum, at Camp 
No. i. In a moment two laughing, shouting boys 
burst forth, still in their night clothes, one chasing 
the other. 

This was Bill’s favorite method of arousing his 
friend from slumber, although Bob did not need a 
great deal of arousing. 

“ Hurry, Bill,” he urged, after quiet once more 
had been restored. “ The gong will ring before 
we know it. Something inside of me says that it 
is breakfast’ time.” 

“ You’re built different from me, then,” said 
Bill. “ It is nothing inside of me which tells me 
that.” 

Whatever the trouble was, it soon was fixed, for 
in a moment the triangle sounded and the lads were 
not slow in taking their places at the table. 

“ What is on for today, boys? ” asked Lee, when 
they were alone. “ Are you still sleuthing? ” 


166 


BILL MAKES A DISCOVERY 167 

“ Not today,” Bob told him. “We are going 
over to the new bridge, either this morning or this 
afternoon, whenever you can spare Lizzie, and 
before we go we want you to tell us all about con- 
crete.” 

“All about concrete?” smiled the engineer. 
“ There have been many books written on the sub- 
ject and there is still much to learn. Yet you ex- 
pect me to tell you about it in fifteen minutes, 
which is all the time I can spare.” 

“ Aw, you know what I mean,” urged Bob. 
“We have seen the concrete gang working, of 
course, but Dad says that concrete is getting to be 
a very important part of railroad building and he 
wants us to learn all we can about it.” 

“ Your father is right, as usual; and not only an 
important part of railroad construction. Rein- 
forced concrete is taking the place of rock and steel 
everywhere, as never before. It has a great future. 
I reckon they will be building ships of it next. 

“How will this do? I must go over to Camp 
No. 3 this morning and shall need the car. Sup- 
pose that you boys drive me over and when I get 
through bring me back. We can do our talking on 
the way without losing any time. We are putting 
in a concrete arch over there and the work will 
help you to understand my explanation, or my ex- 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


1 68 

planation will help you to understand the work, 
whichever way you want to put it.” 

“How about this afternoon?” 

“ As far as I know you may take the car after 
dinner. I want you to see those abutments. You 
will see some fine concrete masonry. I am very 
proud of them.” 

This arrangement suited the boys exactly and as 
soon as the superintendent could get ready they 
started. 

Camp No. 3 was very similar to Camp No. 1, only 
smaller. Here was the 80,000-yard cut, which 
hadn’t been touched when Mr. Vreeland first put 
George Lee in charge of the work, and devoted 
himself to keeping equipment, material, and labor 
moving to what he called “ the firing line,” and 
looking after certain other contracts, which were 
just as important to himself as this one, although 
not so important to the Government. 

A great steamshovel was eating its way into the 
rock and through the hill, night and day. Lee’s 
purpose was to carry the railroad around this hill 
on a temporary grade, until the big cut could be 
finished. 

A half mile beyond the cut a fill was being made 
across a ravine, through which a small creek ran. 
This creek did not amount to much in summer, but 


BILL MAKES A DISCOVERY 169 

in early spring it sometimes became a good-sized 
stream. Whatever the size, it was a natural water- 
course and a hole through the fill had to be left 
for it. Otherwise it might flood the country, wash 
away the entire embankment and cause no end of 
trouble. All this and more Lee explained to the 
boys as they went along. 

“ For a smaller stream,” he said, “ we should put 
in a pipe of some kind, but a pipe through the fill 
in this case wouldn’t carry off the spring flood. 
So we are building a concrete-arch culvert, eigh- 
teen feet wide between the walls. You will see 
that the length of the arch must be governed by the 
height of the fill. The higher the fill, the wider it 
spreads out at the bottom. In a general way, the 
length of a culvert is about three times the height 
of the fill.” 

“ What do you do first in making a cul- 
vert? ” 

“ Naturally, the first thing is the foundation. In 
concrete work the foundation is very important. 
Here is this arch at Camp No. 3, for example. It 
is being built to take care of a stream. Now, the 
very fact that the stream is there to be taken care 
of, is a sign that there is porous rock, and perhaps 
quicksand, near the surface. It would not do to 
rest an arch, or an abutment, on either one. We 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


170 

must go down to bed-rock, below all the porous 
rock and sand. 

“ It isn’t necessary to rest the floor of the cul- 
vert on bed-rock. Sand, or earth, will do for that. 
We start by digging two parallel trenches the en- 
tire length of the arch, down to hard rock. When 
that has been done we put in what we call a 
foundation course ; that is, we fill the trenches with 
heavy stone and cement, up to the grade line. 

“ For the walls, up to the point where the arch 
begins to curve, wooden forms with straight sides 
are used, and concrete is poured into these forms. 
Before going on with the work, the walls are 
allowed to harden; it takes a week or more. Then 
the wooden forms are pulled out, and there’s your 
arch, or there’s your abutment, if you happen to be 
building a bridge. 

“ The engineer inspects it in the rough. If he 
finds it all right, he orders it ' pointed up ’ ; in other 
words, orders the rough places smoothed over with 
cement.” 

“You’re the engineer, George, aren’t you?” 
asked Bill. 

“ I am an engineer, all right, but not the en- 
gineer. You see, I am working for the contractor 
now. The engineer works for the railroad com- 
pany. His business is to see that the contractor 


BILL MAKES A DISCOVERY 17 1 

does his work right, and when it comes to concrete 
he is the whole thing, believe me. There is a new 
man at Camp No. 3, who is making us all kinds of 
trouble. He finds fault with the material when I 
know it is all right.” 

“How do you make the concrete itself?” asked 
Bob. 

“ It is made of crushed stone, sand and cement, 
usually about four parts of stone, two of sand and 
one of cement; maybe six of stone, three of sand 
and one of cement. The proportion of sand is 
about half that of stone. The combination is thor- 
oughly mixed with water until it forms a thick soup 
and then is poured into forms. Often steel rods are 
laid a little way apart through the forms and the 
soup poured around them, forming what is called 
‘ reinforced concrete’; that is, concrete reinforced 
by steel. After it hardens it is wonderfully strong 
and lasts like granite. 

“ Our greatest trouble is in getting proper 
materials. The cement comes in bags from the 
mills, a hundred pounds to the bag and four bags 
to the barrel. The mill guarantees its quality. 
Every particle of cement, for example, usually has 
to pass a series of tests. I’ll mention only one; it 
must be fine enough to go through a mesh made 
up of two hundred strands to the inch. That is 


172 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


pretty fine. It is called a 200-mesh test. Just now 
we have a hard time getting cement from the mills, 
because of the shortage of cars. The railroads of 
the country are badly tied up, on account of the 
great traffic and the very unusual winter.” 

“ It is easy to get sand,” said Bill. “We have 
all kinds of sand at home. Peck’s brook is full of 
it. Once we found some stuff in it that looked like 
gold. We ” 

“ Cut it out, Bill,” exclaimed Bob, “ I want to 
hear about making concrete.” 

“Well, we did, anyhow,” grumbled Bill. 

“ Sometimes it is easy and sometimes not,” ex- 
plained George. “We bring sand in from wher- 
ever we can get it, usually from some river. The 
sand must be sharp. The stone used is usually 
limestone, although not always. It must be a 
sound, seamless stone that will stand a crushing 
test of 20,000 pounds to the square inch. For this 
work we have opened a quarry near by and have 
put in a portable crushing outfit. The sand and 
stone are hauled in dump wagons, or dump cars, 
and stored in bins. The cement is stored in the 
cement room. 

“ The mixing is done by a machine. It is a sort 
of revolving drum, with blades inside, somewhat 
like those in an ice cream freezer, and it runs by 


BILL MAKES A DISCOVERY 


173 

steam power, or gasoline. Water is carried in 
through a pipe. The stuff must be so thoroughly 
mixed that every particle of sand and stone is cov- 
ered with cement. When this has been done the 
contents of the mixer are dumped into a small car 
and from the car dumped into the forms, and there 
you are.” 

“ Easy,” said Bill. “ I could do it with my 
eyes shut.” 

By this time they had reached the camp. Leav- 
ing Lizzie in a quiet spot, they hastened to inspect 
the arch. Instead of being busy on the job, the 
men were standing around helpless, while a tall 
youth, the inspecting engineer, was telling the 
angry foreman a few things. 

Lee muttered an exclamation of impatience and 
strode forward. 

“ What’s the matter now? ” he snapped. 

The engineer looked up and saw who was speak- 
ing. 

“ The matter is,” he explained, coldly, “ that I 
propose to have this arch built right and of right 
materials. That car of cement won’t do, and out 
it goes.” 

“ The cement is all right,” insisted Lee, trying to 
hold his temper. “ It was tested at the mills and 
is fully guaranteed.” 


174 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


“ I am paid to do this inspecting,” replied the en- 
gineer, “ and I tell you the cement won’t do. I 
have thrown it out, and out it stays.” 

This was too much for the hot-blooded young 
Southerner. 

“ I reckon you are paid to do this inspecting,” 
he blazed. “ Who pays you? That is what I want 
to know. Who pays you to hold up this war work 
two weeks? It will take me all of two weeks to 
get another car from the mills, and you know it. 
I’ll tell you one thing. I’ll find out who is paying 
you and your chief will find it out, too.” 

The inspector started forward in anger; then, 
seeing the muscular form of Lee, tense and ready 
for action, thought better of it, much to Bill’s dis- 
appointment. 

“ That is always the way with you fellows,” he 
sneered. “ Try to put something across and when 
you are caught whine about it. You won’t get 
anywhere by insulting me.” 

“ Bring me a 200-mesh sieve,” said Lee to the 
foreman, paying no further attention to the fellow. 

He took out samples of the cement and worked 
the material through the sieve without difficulty. 
There were other field tests which would show the 
quality of the cement beyond question, but it 
would take the best part of a day to make them. 


BILL MAKES A DISCOVERY 


175 


As it was, Lee was certain that something 
“ crooked ” was going on. 

“ Don’t let that car get away from here,” he 
ordered. “ There never was any better cement 
made. I’ll take it up with the chief engineer as 
soon as I get back to the office, and with the War 
Department of the Government, if necessary. 
We’ll see whether a dirty German spy is going to 
hold up this work two weeks.” 

The angry young superintendent strode back to 
his car, followed by the two boys, and after leav- 
ing a few instructions, started for the other 
camp. 

Lee’s outbreak was neither wise nor polite, but 
there is a limit to what any red-blooded young 
American can stand. Moreover, the strain of the 
weeks of hard work, anxiety and loss of sleep, was 
beginning to wear on even his nerves. 

He was as good as his word, it may be said in 
passing. Three days later the offending inspector 
was discharged and orders were received to go 
ahead with the car of cement on hand. 

Usually in such a dispute a railroad company will 
stand by the decision of its own engineer, but this 
was an emergency and, besides, George Lee had 
served as division engineer on this same work. 
He was known to be absolutely trustworthy. 


176 THE TRAIL MAKERS 

Trustworthiness is a great asset, in either men or 
boys. 

While Lee was keeping the wires hot between 
the telegraph office and railroad headquarters, Bob 
and Bill, happy and without a care in the world 
except to keep Lizzie from climbing the trees, 
started for the bridge. 

Two things had taken place, either one of which 
would have made any boy happy. They had put 
away one of the cook’s good dinners and they had 
been present at what for a moment had promised 
to develop into a first class “ scrap.” 

“ Leave it to George,” said Bill, loyally. “ He 
could lick that guy with one hand tied behind his 
back. Say, I only wish Red had been there. He 
wouldn’t have done a thing to him. Oh, no; maybe 
not.” 

They drove along slowly, talking of the many 
things which boys find to talk about and stopping 
here and there to wander into some inviting woods, 
or to look at the work whenever the road ran close 
enough to the grade. 

At the nearest point to the tunnel they left the 
car by the side of the road and walked across the 
fields to where McTavish and his men were hard 
at work. Then they climbed the hill and down 
to the other heading. Cassidy grinned when he 


BILL MAKES A DISCOVERY 


177 

saw Bill looking into the hole, almost deafened by 
the din of the drills. 

“ Stick around a bit,” he wrote, “ and you’ll get 
a chance to smell some more dynamite.” 

But Bill couldn’t be tempted. He was glad he 
had been gassed, it made him feel more like the 
soldiers over on the West Front; but once was 
enough. 

Walking along the proposed grade, they soon 
came to the two new abutments, one on each side 
of a deep ravine, with a pier midway between. 
They were fine pieces of concrete masonry, 
doubly interesting now that the boys knew how 
they had been made. 

“ We’ll build a concrete bridge of our own when 
we get back home,” said Bob. “ Don’t let’s fail 
to be here when they put the steel across. I want 
to see how it is done.” 

“ George told me that these abutments would 
last as long as solid rock,” he added. “ He said he 
reckoned maybe the Pyramids of Egypt were made 
of concrete.” 

Then Bill did what every boy seems called upon 
to do. He was standing at the time, looking up at 
the south abutment. 

“ If this dingbat is going to stand forever,” he 
said, “ it’s got to have Little Willie’s name carved 


178 THE TRAIL MAKERS 

on it. I want to leave something for folks to re- 
member me by.” ' 

He pulled a knife out of his pocket and having 
selected a spot in the base of the wall, about even 
with his chin, started to carve the first letter of 
his name. 

He worked busily while Bob looked on, thinking 
he would carve his own initials under Bill’s. Then 
as Bill began on a second W for Wilson, the knife 
suddenly went into the concrete to the handle, 
and would have gone in farther had not Bill held 
it tight and pulled it out. 

“ What do you know about that!” he mut- 
tered. 

He jabbed around the spot with the point of the 
blade for a moment. The surface broke away, re- 
vealing to the astonished gaze of the boys a 
“ snake hole,” leading down into the abut- 
ment. 

“ Now you’ve done it,” said Bob. “ That is 
where the engineer tested the concrete and he 
didn’t want the hole to show.” 

“ George can cover it up again,” replied Bill, 
confidently. “ He won’t care for a little thing like 
that.” 

The gong had sounded for supper when the boys 
reached camp again, after a very enjoyable after- 


BILL MAKES A DISCOVERY 


179 


noon. Lee and Red waved a welcome, as they 
went into the boarding shanty. 

“ Things are going better,” the superintendent 
whispered. “ The chief engineer is coming to look 
into that cement business. I told him a thing or 
two.” 

“Well, what kind of a time did you have?” he 
asked after supper, when all had gathered in the 
office. 

“ Fine,” exclaimed both boys. “ Those are some 
abutments,” Bob added. 

“ We found the engineer’s snake hole,” said Bill, 
hurrying to get his confession off his mind. “ I 
didn’t mean to do it, but I was carving my initials 
and happened to scrape off the cover.” 

“You found what? ” asked George, greatly puz- 
zled. 

“ Why, the hole the engineer drilled into the 
abutment to test the concrete. I came near losing 
my knife down it.” 

“A hole drilled into the abutment!” shouted 
Lee, bounding to his feet. “ What are you talking 
about? Do you mean to tell me that a hole has 
been drilled into one of those abutments? How 
about it, Bob? ” 

“That’s right. Didn’t you know it? It’s a 
regular drill hole. It had been plugged up at the 


180 THE TRAIL MAKERS 

top so that it wouldn’t show, and Bill happened to 
cut through with his knife.” 

The superintendent’s eyes blazed with anger, 
and a look of anxiety passed over his face, as he 
thought of the stolen dynamite. 

“Red,” he snapped, “get Jack Shumway, and 
get him quick. If you can’t find him at once, get 
somebody else whom you can trust.” 

“ And tell him to bring his gun,” he called, for 
Red already was disappearing through the 
door. 

“ Bob, fill the car with gasoline and have it here 
inside of five minutes. 

“ Bill, tell the cook to put up a lunch for two and 
to be quick about it.” 

Shooting out orders as he ran, Lee made for his 
shanty and two minutes later came out with his 
own “ gun,” a wicked-looking weapon which he 
seldom carried, but kept in condition for use al- 
ways. He was engaged in rough work in a rough 
country. 

Shumway reached the office on a run, almost as 
soon as the superintendent. He asked no ques- 
tions ; Red in a few words had told the story. 

“Jack,” said Lee, “they are going to blow up 
those abutments tonight, unless we get there first. 
Are you with me? ” 


BILL MAKES A DISCOVERY 181 

By way of answer Shumway patted his pistol 
and jumped into the car. 

“ Red, I can’t let you go.” His assistant was 
looking with longing at the car. “ I need you here 
with these boys. We don’t know what may happen. 
Keep your eyes open, all of you, and pass the word 
along to some of the men we can bank on.” 

“Jack,” he blazed, “if I find the fellow who 
drilled that abutment, I’ll drill him. You are in 
for a rough ride.” 

In a whirl of dust, the car shot down the road- 
way and out of sight. 


CHAPTER XVI 


FACE TO FACE 

Had Red and the two boys been able to be every- 
where at once, an hour or more after the hurried 
departure of Lee and Shumway they would have 
seen a man steal out of camp through the gather- 
ing dusk, pushing a bicycle in front of him. Keep- 
ing well away from the office and in the darker 
shadows as much as possible, the fellow soon was 
out of sight from the shanties. 

He then circled around to the road, mounted his 
wheel and was gone. At the main road he turned 
east, which would have added interest to his move- 
ments, for the farm home of Uhlmann lay in that 
direction. Whatever Lee thought of the matter, 
Red still had his suspicions. 

Speeding rapidly through the growing darkness, 
the wheelman hurried along, until he came to the 
farm with the peculiar water tank back of the 
house, and turned in at the gate. 

Uhlmann heard him coming and met him at the 
door. There were a few hurried words, sounds of 


182 


FACE TO FACE 183 

anger; then the solitary wheelman hastened back 
the way he had come. 

He had been gone less than an hour when he 
arrived at the camp again, having been neither seen 
nor missed. He was careful, however, to saunter 
around and show himself to various groups of 
workmen, who sat outside their shanties in the 
cool of the evening. 

When Uhlmann went back into the house he 
was furious. 

“Bunglers!” he muttered, angrily. “I feared 
when they failed last night that something would 
happen. If I could be certain that crazy Lee would 
kill them both, I’d let them go on. They would 
be well out of the way. To think that a cub of a 
boy could upset all my plans! ” 

He moved a heavy piece of furniture from the 
side of the room and revealed a door leading into 
a sort of large closet, which he entered. During 
the next few minutes flashes of light told that 
something mysterious was happening within, but 
no tell-tale gleam could have been seen from out- 
side the house. To the few who passed, by day or 
night, it was an ordinary farmhouse, a little better 
than the general run; that was all. 

The spy smiled grimly when he had come out 
and carefully replaced the furniture. 


184 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


“ It is too bad to disappoint Lee,” he muttered, 
“ but he will have a long wait if he waits for my 
men to show up. I must think what to do next.” 

Thinking seemed a slow process with him, for 
having taken a chair out into the yard where he 
could catch what little breeze there was stirring, 
he sat hour after hour, smoking one cigar after 
another and chewing the ends savagely, while he 
considered frojn every angle how Bill Wilson’s 
accidental discovery would affect himself and his 
plans. 

“ There will be a search,” he decided. “ That 
fool superintendent will go nosing around through 
the country to see what he can find, but with 
Schmidt and Wernski out of the way I’ll have noth- 
ing to fear. He never will suspect me. I might as 
well play safe, however. As soon as it is light 
enough to see I’ll move the plane to the other 
place. I may need it some time for a quick get- 
away. Then I’ll lie low r for a few days and see 
what happens. My men at the camp will keep me 
posted and my water tank still works.” 

Midnight came and went, and still he made no 
move to go to bed, although the whole countryside 
had been asleep for hours, except the night shift 
on the railroad, ceaselessly cutting into the rock. 

One o’clock. Now he began to look impatiently 


FACE TO FACE 


185 

down the road and was rewarded by seeing the 
light from a lantern in the distance and soon after 
by hearing the sounds of an approaching team. 

A few minutes later, Schmidt and Wernski 
turned their mules into the drive and stopped oppo- 
site the glowing cigar. 

“So!” began Uhlmann. “Your bungling has 
brought matters to a fine pass. But for my warn- 
ing Lee would have filled you both full of holes by 
this time. It is what you deserve.” 

“We were not to blame,” replied Schmidt. 
“ You gave us the drill yourself, and it broke. Why 
blame us? ” 

“ You failed; that is why. You no longer are of 
use to the Fatherland, not around here. I’ve called 
you to receive my orders, for before daylight you 
must be on your way. 

“ There is a train going east at five o’clock. See 
that you are on it, both of you. Here is money. 
Make no attempt to get in touch with me for two 
weeks. By that time this thing may have blown 
over. After that, we’ll see; perhaps you can come 
back again. Lee has saved his bridge this time, 
but the next time it may not be so easy.” 

“ Now, listen,” he went on, and for ten minutes 
talked earnestly with his men, answering their 
questions and explaining carefully every move 


1 86 THE TRAIL MAKERS 

which he wished them to make during the next two 

weeks. 

44 The time need not be wasted,” he added. 44 I 
want a full report when you return. Then some 
day you will see big headlines in the newspapers, 
4 Another Munition Plant Blown Up.’ These 
stupid Americans, they make me sick! What do 
they know about war? Bah! They are asleep. 
But the Fatherland, Deutschland, it never sleeps.” 

While all this was taking place, Lee and Shum- 
way were making themselves as comfortable as 
possible, one at each abutment, waiting for the 
dynamiters to arrive to complete their work. 

On reaching the south abutment Lee had thrust 
a stick down into the drill hole to find out whether 
it had been loaded or not. Having made certain 
there was no dynamite in the hole, he gave a sigh 
of relief. 

44 There will be three or four others, Jack,” he 
said, 44 if these chaps know their business, and I 
think they do.” 

It took much prodding, but finally the two men 
succeeded in uncovering four holes. Satisfied that 
there were no more, Lee led the way to the north 
abutment. After a few minutes they found the 
partly drilled hole and understood at once what 
had happened. 


FACE TO FACE 


187 

“ Either they broke their drill or they were 
frightened away, Jack,” he told the shovel-runner, 
“ probably the former. Without doubt they ex- 
pected to finish the job tonight. Watch out for 
them, and shoot to kill. This sort of thing has 
gone far enough.” 

All night long they watched and waited for the 
men who did not come. It would have gone hard 
with Schmidt and Wernski had Uhlmann’s warn- 
ing not reached them in time. 

Morning dawned at last, and with morning, came 
the day shift at the tunnel. Feeling certain there 
would be no attempt to destroy the structures in 
broad daylight, the two weary men crossed the 
fields to their car and returned to camp. 

“ Get some breakfast; then go to bed, Jack,” said 
Lee, kindly. “ Red has put another man on the 
shovel before this. You have done all you can do 
now, and I thank you for it.” 

But there was no going to bed for Lee. Braced 
by a good breakfast and two cups of strong coffee, 
he felt equal to anything. 

“ Red,” said he, when they had met at the office 
to talk over the work of the day, “ you will have 
to run things for a few hours. I am going to call 
on your friend, Uhlmann.” 

“ It’s about time! ” the young man told him. 


188 THE TRAIL MAKERS 

The two were such warm friends that Red did 
not hesitate to speak his mind whenever the occa- 
sion seemed to call for it. 

“ I reckon you are right,” replied the superin- 
tendent, “ but you may remember the old saying 
that hindsight is easier than foresight.” 

He gave orders for the morning’s work, which 
included sending a man to fill the holes in the abut- 
ments with concrete. 

“ Now, Bob,” he continued, “ if you and Bill will 
bring Lizzie around I’ll be on my way.” 

“ Can’t we go with you, George?” asked Bob, 
eagerly. 

“ Why — yes, if you want to. You know where 
the place is and I do not, except from your descrip- 
tion. There is nothing going to happen, but I in- 
tend to have a look at that airplane and that water- 
tank.” 

It might have been noticed, however, when they 
started down the road, that Lee still carried his 
pistol. 

“ That idea of yours about looking for a lost 
mule is a good one,” he observed, as they ap- 
proached Uhlmann’s place. “ A mule is a useful 
animal in many ways. Wait here, while I go m.” 

He jumped out of the car and hurried up the 
drive toward the barn. It was not his intention to 


FACE TO FACE 189 

give anybody time to stop him before he had seen 
what was inside. 

He found nothing that one would not expect to 
find in such a place. A pair of mules looked up as 
he entered and idly swung their tails, but not the 
mule which had strayed from Camp No. 1 some 
time before and had been found in the woods the 
next day. Harnesses hung on the wall and an old 
buggy stood ready for service. It was not a part of 
Uhlmann’s plan to arouse suspicion by a show of 
wealth. No airplane was visible. There was noth- 
ing to be seen that was at all questionable, 
although a pair of the keenest eyes in Tennessee 
searched the place thoroughly. 

Disappointed, Lee turned toward the door, and 
as he stepped outside met Uhlmann, face to 
face. 

For an instant the two men gazed into each 
other’s eyes, each measuring the other; then the 
native courtesy of Lee relieved the tension. 

“ Good morning, suh,” he said, with a disarming 
smile. “ My name is Lee and I work yonder on 
the new railroad. You haven’t seen a stray mule 
around here anywhere, have you? I have been 
looking about a bit, but there is nothing here ex- 
cept your own animals.” 

Uhlmann watched him keenly and saw only good 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


190 

nature and a natural anxiety for a lost mule written 
on the other’s face. 

“ No,” he replied, shortly. “ There has been no 
lost mule around here.” 

“ I am sorry. That is the second one that has 
strayed within a month. Good mules are worth 
money these days and hard to get, at that, but we 
can not build railroads without them.” 

Uhlmann grunted a surly reply. He was not 
in the most amiable frame of mind and his one 
thought was to get rid of his unwelcome visitor as 
quickly as possible. 

“ You-all have a nice place here,” Lee went on, 
affably, “ and running water in the house, I see. 
That is the way to have things. Few of the far- 
mers around here seem to know how to be com- 
fortable. I have seen them shelling their corn by 
hand and carrying their grist to the mill in a bag, 
swung over a horse’s back.” 

“We are comfortable enough,” grunted Uhl- 
mann, “ but it is hard to get help. I am not much 
of a farmer myself.” 

“By George, suh!” exclaimed the young man, 
“ That water tank makes me thirsty.” He stopped 
opposite the pump and gazed up at the guy wires. 
“ I am going to trouble you for a drink and then 
will continue my search.” 


FACE TO FACE 


191 

“ Step to the door then,” grumbled the 
farmer, reluctantly. “ I’ll have to get it from the 
house. The pump is out of order.” 

“ I thank you kindly, suh,” said Lee, after drink- 
ing. “ That was refreshing.” 

He waved a friendly good-bye and rejoined the 
boys in the automobile. At Lee’s direction Bob 
drove slowly along, while the superintendent 
anxiously looked to the right and left for some 
trace of a lost mule. 

Uhlmann, watching them disappear down the 
road, congratulated himself that Schmidt and 
Wernski were out of the way and the airplane se- 
curely hidden. 

“ I wonder if he really has lost a mule,” he 
thought. “ He’ll lose more than that before I get 
through with him.” 

“ Your friend Uhlmann is a hard nut to crack,” 
Lee was telling the boys at about the same time. 
“ He is a surly beast, but evidently a man of force 
and ability. He is no farmer; that is certain. In 
fact, he said so himself. Are you boys sure about 
that airplane? There is no sign of one in the barn 
now.” 

“ We both saw it,” Bob insisted. “ Bill found it 
first, in a corner where some big doors open into a 


192 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


pasture, and called me over. We couldn’t have 
been mistaken; could we, Bill?” 

“ Mistaken, nothing ! I saw it as plain as day. 
It was something, all right. I don’t know what, 
but it was something.” 

“ I wonder what he has done with it,” mused 
Lee. “Well, I found out one thing, anyhow. 
That water tank hasn’t any water in it and I doubt 
that it ever had. What’s it for? That is the ques- 
tion.” 

He thought intently for a minute, then went on, 

“ It sounds crazy, but no crazier than your fairy 
tale about an airplane. Do you know, I believe 
that fake water tank, with the guy wires which 
don’t guy anything, is some kind of a radio plant? 
I noticed the wires particularly when Uhlmann was 
getting me a drink. They go into the house in- 
stead of being fastened to the outside, as it looks 
from the road.” 

“Do you mean a wireless telegraph plant?” 
asked Bob. 

“Yes, a crude affair, but a wireless outfit, or I 
miss my guess. I am not an expert in such mat- 
ters, but I learned enough in my engineering 
course at college to know that, crude as it is, such 
a plant, if it is what I think it is, would have a 
range of about eight miles.” 


FACE TO FACE 


i93 


“ What’s the good of talking eight miles by 
wireless?” asked Bob. “A telephone would be 
better.” 

“ Telephone service would not be so secret and 
the wires might be found easily. Besides, the 
Teuton mind works in wondrous ways its marvels 
to perform. This may be a part of some big 
scheme.” 

“ Where would he talk to? ” 

“ That is the question. It is all mere suspicion, 
of course. I don’t even feel justified in bothering 
your father or the Federal authorities with the 
matter, until we have something more than 
guesswork to go on. Here is all we really 
know : 

“ First, several things have happened to delay 
some important work which is a part of the Gov- 
ernment’s war preparation. These things may 
have been accidents, however. Don’t forget that. 
No work of this extent ever went along absolutely 
without a hitch. 

“ Secondly, some dynamite has been stolen from 
us and somebody tried to blow up the bridge abut- 
ments. There is no doubt about that, and but for 
you boys he might have succeeded. However, that 
may have been the act of some discharged work- 
man, trying to get even.” 


194 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


“ Great snakes ! Old Sneeze-twice ! ” exclaimed 
Bill. 

“ Old what? ” 

“ He means Wernski,” Bob explained, “ the man 
you fired for dropping his wrench into the shovel.” 

“ That’s right. I’d forgotten him.” 

“ He was one of the guys at the Hidden Hut,” 
Bill told him. “ Betcher life I haven’t forgotten 
him.” 

“ Thirdly,” said Lee, going on with his count, “ a 
fake farmer, with a fake water tank and a German 
name, has an airplane hidden somewhere, which 
also may be a fake.” 

“It doesn’t sound like much, does it?” con- 
fessed Bob. 

“Nevertheless, I believe we are on the right 
track and you two Boy Scouts who, with Red, 
already have done so much, are just the ones to 
finish the job. I have some real scout work for 
you to do and it will be work for your country.” 

“ Lead us to it,” yelled Bill. “ Give Little Willie 
a chance.” 

Bob was no less pleased, but he was handling 
Lizzie and she needed all his attention. 

“Here is your work: If we are right and that 
water tank is a wireless outfit with a range of about 
eight miles, there must be a similar plant some- 


FACE TO FACE 


195 

where within the range. If we can find another 
water tank with guy wires, we shall have some- 
thing more definite to go on. It is up to you boys 
to find that tank.” 

“We’ll go fishing tomorrow,” promised Bill. 

Lee smiled at the eagerness of the boys and felt 
that he was leaving the matter in good hands. It 
was rather serious business for him, aside from any 
feeling of patriotism. The railroad was his first big 
job and his whole future might hinge on the suc- 
cess with which he handled it. 

“ Here is a cross-road,” he said, finally. “ Turn 
here, Bob, and then get back to camp as soon as 
you can. We all have important work to do.” 


CHAPTER XVII 


GAME TO THE LIMIT 

There were not many houses in that part of Ten- 
nessee. Camp No. i was about twenty miles from 
the nearest town of any size. In driving along the 
winding country roads one would come upon an 
occasional forlorn-looking cabin, but even such 
houses were few and far between. To look for a 
water tank in this wilderness seemed to the boys 
much like hunting for a needle in a haystack. 

“We are not certain that there is a second 
tank/’ Lee reminded them, “ even granting that 
Uhlmann’s tank is a radio station, and we are not 
sure of that. The next station easily might have 
been given some other form, fake lightning rods, 
for example. You boys will have your hands 
full.” 

“ Leave it to us,” replied Bill, always sure of 
himself. 

“We’ll do our best,” said Bob. 

“ If George is right about Uhlmann’s wireless 
having a range of eight miles,” Red told them, “ and 
196 


GAME TO THE LIMIT 


197 


George usually knows what he is talking about, 
you have that much to go on. The second tank 
must be somewhere within eight miles of Uhl- 
mann’s house. That leaves you only 256 square 
miles to hunt over.” 

But the boys were not easily discouraged. To 
all such remarks they replied that they would hunt 
until they found it. 

“ If Uhlmann is the guy who stole that dyna- 
mite and is leader of the gang which is trying to 
blow up the abutments and hold up the railroad, as 
we think he is,” they reasoned, when talking over 
their plans by themselves, “ it’s a cinch that he has 
spies on the work, maybe like that engineer at 
Camp No. 3 was. Perhaps he has them in every 
camp. In that case he would want the second sta- 
tion as close to the railroad as he could get it 
without our finding it out.” 

“ There isn’t any use in our looking on the other 
side of Uhlmann’s, then,” said Bill, “ the side away 
from the railroad. If we find anything at all, it is 
sure to be on this side. That will help some.” 

“ I know what we can do,” Bob told him. “ Let’s 
draw a circle on a piece of paper, with a diameter 
of sixteen inches. The center of that circle will be 
Uhlmann’s house and every inch will mean a mile. 
Then all parts of the circle will be within range of 


i 9 8 THE TRAIL MAKERS 

the water tank. Come on over to the office and 
get some paper.” 

George and Red were both out somewhere on 
the work, but the boys knew where Lee kept his 
drawing tools and it was a simple matter to line a 
circle with a radius of eight inches. 

Bill looked at it wistfully, with just a little touch 
of homesickness. 

“ It looks some like our Sign at home,” said he. 
“ That is the way we call the gang.” 

He took a pencil and drew a small water tank 
with guy wires attached, in the very center of the 
circle. 

“What’s that you are drawing?” asked Bob. 
“A load of hay?” 

“ Never mind what it is,” said Bill. “ Uhlmann 
will know what it is before we get through with 
him. That’s all I’ve got to say.” 

“ Maybe you can draw in the other tank, the one 
we are looking for? ” 

But that was too much, even for Bill. 

“ Now we’ll get George to draw in the railroad,” 
Bob went on, “ and draw it to the same scale, one 
inch to the mile; then we’ll know where we are at, 
as they say down here. George knows the rail- 
road by heart ; it will take him only a few minutes 
to do it.” 


GAME TO THE LIMIT 


199 


“ How far is Uhlmann’s from Camp No. 1? ” 

“ I noticed the speedometer when we drove 
George over in the car. It showed a little more 
than three miles. The road winds some, so we’ll 
call it an even three miles.” 

Bob measured three inches west from the center, 
made a mark there and called it Camp No. 1. Bill 
grabbed the pencil again and made another draw- 
ing. 

“ That’s a mighty good wheelbarrow, Bill,” Bob 
told him, holding the map off at arm’s length and 
gazing at it in great admiration. 

“ Great snakes, Bob,” was the reply, “ how can 
you expect to catch German spies if you don’t 
know your own tent when you see it? ” 

Lee came in just then and was greatly interested 
in what the boys were trying to do. He took the 
pencil and after consulting his blue prints quickly 
sketched in the railroad on a scale of one mile to 
the inch. 

“ Where is the bridge? ” asked Bob. 

“ The bridge is about two inches outside the cir- 
cle. About here,” he said, putting a pencil mark 
on the spot. “ Now you boys will have to excuse 
me. This is my busy day.” 

“ Bob,” said his friend, after the boys had gone 
back to their tent, “ the thing to do first is to de- 


200 THE TRAIL MAKERS 

cide where not to look. There is no need of look- 
ing on the east side of Uhlmann’s. That cuts out 
half the circle to start with.” 

“And there is no use in looking near Camp No. 
i,” said Bob. “ It is too close. A man could walk 
from here, or go over on a bicycle. I could do it 
in a few minutes, if I had a wheel.” 

“ That is right, and somebody may be doing that 
very thing. How many wheels are there in 
camp? ” 

“We can look that up later. Here is what 
let’s do now.” 

He first drew a line through the center of the 
circle, marking off the half where they would not 
have to look; then, with the water tank as a cen- 
ter, he drew a smaller circle, its circumference 
passing through the tent at Camp No. i. 

“ Now, I don’t believe we need look anywhere in 
that small circle.” 

“ Bob,” said Bill, excitedly, “ I’ll bet it is some- 
where near those abutments. They are not far 
outside the eight-mile range.” 

Bob didn’t say a word ; he was too busy thinking. 
His chum’s remark had given him an idea. He 
drew another circle, starting outside the big circle 
and using as a center Lee’s mark, showing the posi- 
tion of the bridge. He drew this small circle the 


GAME TO THE LIMIT 201 

same size as the other, which passed through Camp 
No. 1. 

“ Three miles,” he explained, “ is about as far as 
a German spy would want to walk.” 

When he had finished, a small part of the new 
circle lay within the large one. Measuring this 
part, he found that it was four inches long between 
the points where the lines of the circles crossed, and 
it was one inch wide at the widest place. 

“ Now, Bill,” he said, “ if George is right about 
the eight-mile range of Uhlmann’s tank and if you 
are right about the other tank’s being somewhere 
near the abutments, we ought to find it in that 
oval formed by the two circles, — unless,” he 
added, “ it happens to be somewhere else.” 

“We’ll look, anyhow,” Bill told him. “It’s a 
good hunch. That means we’ll only have to hunt 
over a place four miles long and a mile wide in the 
widest part. It’s easy.” 

“ And walk miles to get there,” added Bob, “ un- 
less we can take Lizzie, which I don’t think we 
can.” 

“ I reckon you are on the right track,” Lee told 
them, after he had seen the wonderful map. “ I 
think, myself, that the other tank will be found 
somewhere near the new bridge. I can’t spare the 


202 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


car tomorrow, but Red is going nearly there in 
the morning. He will need the car to bring him 
back, but you can ride as far as he goes. Maybe 
he will take you a little farther, if you say 
please.” 

“ Where is he?” 

“ He went over to the shovel an hour ago; there 
is no telling where he is now.” 

The two boys hurried over to the cut in the hope 
of finding their friend, although they knew well 
enough, without asking, that he would take them 
as far as they wished, providing he had time. 

“ He left twenty minutes ago on the dump 
train,” the shovel-runner told them. “ Said he was 
going down to the fill to see how the trestle was 
coming. They are nearly across the ravine with 
the bents.” 

The boys would have gone down after him on 
the next train, only, as it happened, the shovel 
was moving back. No more cars would be loaded 
until it was in position again and that would take 
an hour or longer. The big machine had eaten its 
way through the cut and had to move back 
for a fresh start, in order to take out a deeper 
slice. 

The boys stopped to watch the operation. At 
the top of the grade, where the shovel always 


0AME TO THE LIMIT 


203 


works, stood a partly loaded train, waiting. The 
engineer had gone off to lie down under a bush. 
He had been carousing the night before and was 
sleepy. It was contrary to orders, but, knowing 
that the train would not be needed for an hour or 
more, he had set the brakes on the locomotive and 
gone to sleep. 

As Bob stood watching the men, he happened to 
glance toward the dump train and was horrified to 
see that it was moving, with nobody in the cab 
to stop it. The air had leaked off and released 
the brakes, while the engineer slept. 

Faster and faster moved the train. There was 
only a slight grade now but soon the cars would 
reach the four per cent grade by which the track 
led out of the cut. 

Bob groaned. A four per cent grade means a de- 
scent of more than two hundred feet to the mile. 
With a moving start, the heavy train would take 
the grade like an avalanche; dash into a concrete 
gang; thunder down the track to the dump, and 
with speed not much lessened, shoot out on the 
trestle; then plunge into the deep ravine below, 
with a crash and a roar, leaving a trail of death 
and destruction behind. 

Even as the quick imagination of the boy pic- 
tured the great disaster, which not only might kill 


204 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


a half dozen men, Red Hurley himself, perhaps, but 
destroy his father’s property and delay the rail- 
road, Bob was running for the cab. 

The shovel crew were intent on their work and 
did not see what was happening. The faithless en- 
gineer was sleeping off his spree. Even Bill was 
out of sight, on the other side of the shovel. 

The locomotive was at the far end of the train, 
in position for pushing the load ahead of it. There 
was not time to call out ; hardly time to think. Bob 
needed every ounce of energy to get to the cab and 
act before the train should reach the four per cent 
grade. 

A boy little knows, during the years of his play 
and study, when or how he is going to use the 
knowledge he is storing up. The long hours which 
in the past Bob had given to studying the blue 
prints of a locomotive, simply because he liked to 
do it, until he was able to follow the entire course 
and process of the expanding steam; the happy 
hours, during which he and Bill had played with 
the home-made boiler and steam whistle in the 
Vreeland back yard; his stunts at Camp No. I, in 
running this same locomotive under the guiding 
eye of the engineer, that day were to save human 
life, valuable property, and precious time. 

With a few more bounds the boy reached the 


GAME TO THE LIMIT 205 

locomotive and climbed into the cab. It was but 
the work of a second to pull back the reverse 
lever; another to reach for the brake valve and 
set the brakes. As the train slowed down, he 
glanced at the water gauge. It was empty! His 
heart seemed to stop beating; then to pound 
furiously. Swiftly he tried the gauge cock. There 
was no sign of water. 

Young as he was, Bob knew what that meant. 
The height of water in the tube shows the amount 
in the boiler. The boiler was empty, or nearly so, 
and the forward pitch of the locomotive on the 
four per cent grade made matters worse. 

His first thought was to open the injector and 
let water into the boiler, in order to save his 
father’s locomotive from injury. Before he could 
act, there flashed into his mind a picture of what 
might happen, should the water be low enough to 
have exposed the crown sheet, the roof of the fire- 
box. An explosion might follow, with little chance 
for his own escape from death. There is a fire- 
plug in the crown sheet of every locomotive, which 
is supposed to melt at such times and let steam into 
the firebox, thus putting out the fire. It does not 
always work and Bob knew it. 

Robert Vreeland, Jr., did a lot of thinking during 


206 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


the brief moment of his hesitation. He thought of 
his father’s loss; of Lee’s despair over the new 
delay; of his country’s need. His country ! He 
was a Boy Scout! The work of war preparation 
must go on at any cost. 

“ O, God,” he prayed, “help me to be brave 
enough to do it.” 

Then he grasped the injector handle and gave it 
a jerk, bracing himself for the explosion which in 
another moment might cover his body with scald- 
ing steam. 

Nothing happened. He had acted in time. 

A few seconds later a thankful boy threw off the 
brakes again, and slowly the locomotive drew the 
train back to the top of the grade. 

It was Jack Shumway, the shovel-runner, who 
lifted him down from the cab with strong arms and 
stood him on his feet in the midst of the excited 
men. 

“ Good work, Bob,” he exclaimed. “ You are a 
chip of the old block.” 

The men gave a little cheer and good old Bill, 
his boy chum, pounded him on the back until it 
hurt. Best of all, however, was when George Lee, 
after scolding him for taking such a chance, but 
all the while thanking him with shining eyes, 
ended with, 


GAME TO THE LIMIT 


207 

“ Bob, I am proud of you. You are true-blue 
and game .0 the limit. ,, 

No, not best of all, for Bob went to bed that 
night with a singing heart. He had been true to 
himself and his duty, and was happily conscious 
of it. 

] 


CHAPTER XVIII 


THE SECOND WATER TANK 

The search for a second water tank proved to be 
a harder task than the remarkable map seemed to 
promise. The boys went “ fishing ” on the follow- 
ing day, as they had planned, and on several other 
days, only to return tired and disappointed at 
night. They had become nearly convinced that 
there wasn’t any such thing, when they ran upon 
it, accidentally. 

The house stood far back from the road on the 
edge of a clearing, not more than a mile and a half 
from the bridge. They had seen it from a distance 
several times, as they passed along the road in the 
course of their wanderings, but they had seen no 
signs of a water tank. 

They might have passed it again on this par- 
ticular day, but for the fact that the sun was hot, 
they had been walking far, and were thirsty. 

“ It is quite a ways down there,” said Bill, look- 
ing toward the house, “ but I’ve got to have a 
drink and that is all there is about it. This may 
be the only chance we’ll have for some time.” 


208 


THE SECOND WATER TANK 


209 


A driveway, which was little more than a wagon 
track, led through a large field and after a time 
brought them to the house. 

“ I don’t see any pump,” said Bob, “ but there 
must be one somewhere. Let’s go around back.” 

Half-way around they caught sight of something 
which made them stop and gaze into each other’s 
eyes with fierce joy. A water tank stood back of 
the house, so placed that it could not be seen from 
the front. Moreover, the owner seemed to be a 
careful man. Water tanks cost money. Should 
this one be blown down by the wind there would 
be quite a loss. Guy wires, therefore, held the tank 
in place. Those on one side were fastened to a 
post; those on the other ran down to what seemed 
to be a fastening on the house. 

Thirst was forgotten in the excitement of the 
discovery, but they felt obliged to go on. A man 
had come through a side door and stood waiting 
for them. The lads were equal to the occasion, 
however, after the first shock of surprise. 

“ We came in for a drink,” explained Bob, pleas- 
antly. “We have been over to the tunnel watch- 
ing the work. Warm, isn’t it?” 

He started for the pump under the tank, Bill 
close to his side. 

“ Vait here,” said the man. “ I’ll pring you a 


210 THE TRAIL MAKERS 

drink from der house oudt. I have some fresh 
from der — what you call it? — old, oaken pucket.” 

He laughed at his little joke and disappeared 
through the doorway. Boys were harmless crea- 
tures and he had been living a lonely life since 
Schmidt and Wernski went away. 

Bill’s lips had barely time noiselessly to form the 
word “ German ” for Bob’s benefit, when the man 
returned with a pitcher of water and a gourd 
dipper. 

“ How is der tunnel coming on? ” he asked. “ I 
must go over to see it, meinself.” 

“ Don’t go today,” Bill cautioned him. “ It ain’t 
safe. Cassidy is cussing to beat the band. His 
gang ran into a lot of quicksand this morning.” 

Having found out more than they had expected, 
the boys started back up the road, grinning to 
themselves, but hardly daring to speak of their dis- 
covery. When they were out of sight from the 
house, however, Bill could stand it no longer. He 
drew in a long breath, opened his mouth wide, and 
there came from it the most blood-curdling sounds 
heard in that part of Tennessee in many a day. 

The startled occupant of the solitary house ran 
to the door and listened. The noise did not come 
again and he went back greatly puzzled. 

The boys reached camp without further adven- 


THE SECOND WATER TANK 


211 


tures. They were very much elated. Lee was in 
his office, talking with Red and a grbup of men. 
The superintendent saw signs of news in the 
flushed and excited faces of his young friends and 
held up a warning finger for silence. 

After the men finally had gone he turned, as 
eager as they. 

“ Well,” he said, “out with it. What has hap- 
pened? ” 

“ Cassidy has struck quicksand,” Bob told him, 
nudging Bill to keep quiet. 

“ We have heard about that already and it’s bad 
news. Unless I am very much mistaken you two 
chaps are almost bursting with good news of some 
kind.” 

“ We’ve found it,” shouted Bill, not able to keep 
still any longer. 

“What? The water tank? ” 

“Betcher life, and it’s just like Uhlmann’s.” 

“ Good ! ” exclaimed Lee, when he had heard the 
whole story. “ Now we have something to work 
on. It is time for me to get busy.” 

“ What are you going to do? ” asked Bob. 

“ Can you boys keep a secret? ” smiled Lee. “ I 
know you can. I felt so certain that we were on 
the right track that I sent to Memphis for the parts 
and I am going to rig up a detector.” 


212 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


“ A what-or? ” 

“ A detector. It is the receiving part of a wire- 
less outfit, without the sending part. If I am not 
mistaken, we shall be able to ‘ listen in ’ on your 
friend Uhlmann’s messages and find out what he is 
trying to do.” 

But the detector failed utterly to detect. Not the 
first sound of a message could they hear, although 
the boys spent much time listening, both by day 
and by night. 

This was not surprising. Schmidt and Wernski 
were still away on their mysterious errand and 
Uhlmann, having secured the help of negro la- 
borers, was quietly directing the work about the 
farm, apparently interested in nothing except the 
raising of a crop. 

Lee fretted at the apparent failure of his de- 
tector. He felt like a man groping in the dark, in 
the presence of danger, not knowing when or 
where his foe would strike. 

The finding of a second tank had convinced him 
of the correctness of his suspicions. That the tanks 
concealed small radio stations he no longer 
doubted. Their range was limited, it is true, but 
similar stations scattered over the country, hidden 
in a seemingly harmless form, easily might be used 


THE SECOND WATER TANK 


213 


to relay messages to and from some larger station 
out of sight among the mountains. 

Having been proved a success in this out-of-the- 
way part of the country, a similar system might be 
put in somewhere in the Southwest, for the purpose 
of sending news across the Mexican border; or on 
the Atlantic coast similar stations might be used 
to send reports to enemy submarines, lurking 
within range. 

He realized that Germany would seek to delay 
America’s war preparations as much as possible, 
in the hope of winning the war before the United 
States could get on the firing line, and to this end 
would rely on the very large German-born popula- 
tion living in the country. 

“ I believe that most of them will prove loyal,” 
he said to Red, in talking over the matter, 
“ although the war is placing them in a very trying 
situation. They will stick by their adopted coun- 
try and will realize that the old, beautiful Germany 
which they loved — the Germany of art and music 
and poetry and good fairies — has passed away. 
The German nation of today has lost its 
soul. 

“ But there will be some whose sympathies will 
be entirely with the Fatherland and who can give 
us a great deal of trouble. Uhlmann probably is 


214 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


one of these, or he may be an officer in the Prus- 
sian army, sent over here for the purpose of putting 
in a system of small radios, which might escape 
notice where larger once would be certain of dis- 
covery.” 

Just how far Uhlmann had gone in his work he 
did not know, but hoped to find out by means of 
his detector. Probably the plan was still an ex- 
periment. The two or more stations in western 
Tennessee might have been placed in a thinly set- 
tled wilderness in order to prove their value before 
putting in a system on a larger scale. 

It was plain enough why an effort was being 
made to delay the building of the railroad. The 
railroad itself was nothing, but already a large 
tract of land adjoining the river was being filled 
and graded for the great buildings of the world's 
largest explosives plant. The site had been chosen 
by the War Department because of the enormous 
water power available and the Government was 
relying on Mr. Vreeland's promise that the exten- 
sion of the railroad to the huge plant would be 
ready in time. 

There was another and more important reason, 
supposed to be a Government secret, which even 
Lee only recently had found out, but which evi- 
dently the remarkable German spy system had dis- 


THE SECOND WATER TANK 


215 

covered long before. A new chemical, valuable 
in the manufacture of the most powerful explosive 
known, had been found along the line of the pro- 
posed railroad. This explosive was expected to 
shatter the throne of the Kaiser and the railroad^ 
must be ready in time to haul in the chemical in 
large quantities. 

“ And it is going into operation in time, Red,” 
declared Lee, through clenched teeth, “ in spite 
of all the Uhlmanns in the world. We need 
that plant to blast the German army out of 
France.” 

He seriously thought of notifying the Govern- 
ment of his suspicions, which he ought to have 
done, but for some reason hesitated. He would be 
laughed at should the water tanks prove as harm- 
less as they looked. Perhaps the spirit of the chase 
had taken hold of him and he felt confident of his 
own ability to handle the matter. At any rate, he 
decided to wait until he had absolute proof before 
reporting to the Department of Justice. 

Those were stirring days. Lee threw himself 
into the work with new energy and drove the men 
almost to the limit of endurance. Red, lover of 
fun, had no time to play, or for his two friends. 
His smile began to fade and his face to take on a 
drawn look under the pressure. He was here, 


2l6 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


there and everywhere, carrying out his chiefs 
plans and instructions. Without knowing it, the 
boy was becoming a man, and a man with whom 
the future would have to reckon, for he was grow- 
ing rapidly in mental and moral vigor, and was 
getting an unusual experience under a good 
teacher. 

Once every week Lee held a meeting of fore- 
men at various points along the line, frankly talked 
the situation over with them and tried to fill them 
with his own enthusiasm and energy. He looked 
upon them and upon himself as soldiers, just as 
important to the safety of the country, although in 
a different way, as the thousands of young men 
who were volunteering their services to fight on 
the battlefields of France. 

Like so many Southern men, Lee was a natural 
leader. His talks and especially his example be- 
came a great driving force. He was “ getting 
things done,” as Schmidt had predicted. 

Thousands of negroes were being sent North 
from various parts of the South to fill the ranks of 
labor. German spies were telling others that they 
would be put back into slavery should Germany 
fail to win the war. Some of the more ignorant be- 
lieved it and there were rumors of threatened 
trouble. Hardly a newspaper came into camp 


THE SECOND WATER TANK 217 

which did not contain news of strikes, explosions, 
and fires of mysterious origin. 

Through it all, work on the extension of the G. 
A. & R. Railroad moved forward steadily and 
rapidly, in spite of many delays and accidents. 


CHAPTER XIX 


LAYING THE STEEL 

One of the most troublesome delays of all was 
caused by the quicksand in the tunnel. It was the 
one thing about the tunnel job which the superin- 
tendent had feared. A workable grade already 
was being thrown up around the hill, which would 
make possible the operation of trains on a slow 
schedule, without the tunnel, but the War Depart- 
ment was hurrying him to complete the bore at the 
earliest possible minute. The full capacity of the 
road would be none too much and capacity could 
not be reached without using the tunnel and the 
uncompleted cuts. 

Quicksand is queer stuff and the boys were 
greatly interested in it. It is a very fine sand, 
which when wet is not much more stable than 
water. Bob had a book at home which told about 
the death of a man in quicksand. He had started 
to wade across a shallow bit of water, and when 
half-way across found himself sinking in quick- 
sand. The more he struggled, the deeper he sank, 
218 


LAYING THE STEEL 


219 


until finally he was swallowed up entirely. There 
is a case on record where a whole train was lost 
in quicksand, somewhere in the Southwest. 

There was no danger of anything like that hap- 
pening in the tunnel, but the men were finding it 
impossible to run their heading through it. It 
was like trying to scoop the river up with a pail. 
The sand poured into the hole in a steady stream, 
putting a stop to all progress. 

Lee and Red, with Cassidy, stood looking at it 
one day, trying to think of some way out of the 
trouble. They had tried the ordinary methods with- 
out success. They had driven “ sheeting ” in an 
effort to hold the slippery stuff back. They had 
tried to wall it off with stones. They even had 
tried to make it into concrete by forcing a rich 
grout into it, for concrete will harden under water 
almost as quickly as in the air. 

“Tell that blithering mush-eater, McTavish, to 
swallow it,” growled Cassidy, bitterly. “ There 
ain't no other way to get rid of the stuff that I 
know of.” 

While the trouble with the quicksand was 
through no fault of the Irish foreman, the grin on 
the Scotchman’s face, whenever the two men met, 
rankled. 

“ If it were only fall instead of early summer,” 


220 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


sighed Lee, “ we could wait for a freeze and then 
get in our concrete before a thaw.” 

“Freeze, did you say!” exclaimed Red, ex- 
citedly. “Freeze? Jiminy, that would do the 
business, wouldn’t it? I hadn’t thought of that.” 

“ It surely would, but what is the use talking 
about it? Here we are six months from a frost. Of 
course, if we can’t do any better the Government 
will have to wait. We can operate, anyhow. 

“What is the matter, Red? Are you having 
a fit?” 

“Wait!” commanded that young man. “I’m 
thinking.” 

“ He’s thinking, Mike,” explained Lee to the 
foreman. “ Keep everything that will burn out 
of the way until he gets through. We don’t want 
to add fire to quicksand.” 

“ Begorra,” grinned the Irishman, “ Oi’ve given 
orders already for a man to stand by with the hose 
whiniver the lad comes around.” 

Red didn’t hear their good-natured gibes, or, if 
he did, paid no attention. 

“ I’ve got it, George,” he shouted, excitedly. 
“ Do you remember the time you sent me up to 
Memphis after those repairs? While I was wait- 
ing I went into the ice factory and saw them freeze 
ice with ammonia. Can’t we freeze this quicksand 


LAYING THE STEEL 


221 


somehow in the same way? The Government 
would stand the expense.” 

Lee gave his young helper a quick look of ad- 
miration and turned the matter over in his mind for 
a moment. 

“ Red,” he decided, finally, “ you’ve done the 
trick, I verily believe. It will cost money, but, as 
you say, Uncle Sam can stand it. It will cost more 
not to have the tunnel working. If we can freeze 
that stuff long enough to get a concrete wall across 
it, we’ll have no further trouble. We can use our 
air compressor. The ammonia will ruin it, but that 
will be a part of the expense. I never heard of its 
being done, but it is worth trying, and if we suc- 
ceed this will be the best day’s work you ever 
did.” 

It may be said in passing that Red’s scheme was 
tried and it “ worked,” much to that young man’s 
delight and greatly to the benefit of his monthly 
pay-check. 

June found track-laying well started by the rail- 
road company. Mr. Vreeland’s contract called 
only for the grading and there was still much to be 
done before the iron trail would reach Camp No. i. 

Track-laying had begun far to the south, at the 
point where the extension joined the main-line. 
One day a section foreman and his gang arrived 


222 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


on the scene and put in a frog and a switch there. 
Then they laid the new track to the extent of one 
rail’s length from the frog. This was all they had 
to do with the new railroad. Their task was done 
quickly and well, and the gang was shifted to 
other work. 

Then one morning an extra gang drifted in on a 
special train of box cars. Nearly every boy has 
seen similar trains standing on sidings along the 
main-line, where work is in progress. They are 
to a railroad company what camps are to a con- 
tractor. They are camps on wheels, ready to be 
moved anywhere on the line on short notice. In 
each of these trains some of the cars are fitted up 
with bunks; some have tables like those at Camp 
No. i; one car is used for a kitchen; another, for 
tools, etc. 

The first thing which the extra gang did was to 
lay a sidetrack for their own train. Then it was 
backed in on the siding and while the men went to 
work with a will the cooks began to prepare din- 
ner, against the time when the men would come in 
hungry. 

At the front end of the train were flat cars 
loaded with ties, steel rails, bolts, spikes, and other 
necessaries. On another car a small hoisting en- 
gine stood ready to help handle the heavy rails. 


LAYING THE STEEL 


223 


These were 8o-pound rails, which means that they 
weighed eighty pounds to the yard. As they were 
thirty-three feet long each rail weighed 880 
pounds. 

The rail gang consisted of about forty men. 
Twelve to fourteen handled the ties and from fif- 
teen to twenty, the rails. Small push cars were used 
to haul rails and ties on. They traveled back and 
forth on the ever-lengthening track. 

The ties were taken from the push car by the 
men and laid, one after another, across the grade. 
Their centers were placed from eighteen to twenty 
inches apart. This is not proper spacing to make 
walking easy for boys, as every one knows who has 
tried walking down a railroad track, but this trail 
was not being made for boys; it was being made 
for the “ iron horse.” 

As fast as the line of ties went forward, a gang 
of negroes came with rails, lifting them from the 
push car at the end of the track and stringing them 
in two parallel lines along the ties ahead. Back of 
these men came others, who bolted on the angle 
bars and drove in the spikes. Holes in the web 
had been punched at the mill when the rails were 
made and the angle bars already had been loosely 
bolted on. 

On top of each tie, under the rail, a tie plate was 


224 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


placed. This is a square piece of steel a quarter of 
an inch thick, made with holes for the spikes to go 
through. Its purpose is to keep the rail from cut- 
ting into the tie under the weight and pounding of 
the trains. Good white oak ties will not require 
more than about four tie plates to the rail, except 
on curves. 

Close behind the spikers, came the leveling 
gang, who threw earth around the ties and lev- 
eled up the track. A new track does not look 
much like the straight trail of shining steel, which 
stretches in^to the distance from nearly every city 
and village in the land. It looks more like the 
trail of a snake. It takes weeks and even months 
to line-up a track properly. 

“ Why do you leave a space between the ends of 
the rails? ” Bill asked one day. The boys had gone 
down the line to see that part of the work. 

“To take care of the expansion,” the “super- 
visor ” told him. 

“ Great snakes! ” said Bill. “ Do you mean that 
a heavy rail like that expands?” 

“You can bet it does, as you would find out 
next August if we didn’t leave that space.” 

Every one, when riding on the cars or watching 
a train pass, has noticed the pounding of the 
wheels at the joints of the rails. 


LAYING THE STEEL 


225 

“ Watch us hustle, watch us hustle,” the wheels 
seem to say. 

This is because of the space left between the 
rails. If you will look at a track in winter and 
again in summer, on a hot day, you will find that 
there is not as much space between the rails in 
summer as in winter. 

“ A solid rail would ride easier,” persisted Bill. 

“ That is what another smart Aleck thought 
once,” explained the new friend. “ He welded the 
rails together and the riding was fine, until one 
hot day the rails expanded so much that the track 
was thrown out of line. Something had to give. 
When expansion gets started nothing on earth 
can stop it. The expansion of freezing water will 
split the hardest rock.” 

“ How much will a rail expand? ” asked Bob. 

“ That depends on how hot it gets. I can’t 
carry the figures in my head, but here is a little 
book which will tell us all about it.” 

He pulled a small book from a pocket and 
thumbed the pages until he had found what he was 
looking for. 

“ Here it is. The expansion of steel is given as 
.00000686 for one degree of heat.” 

“ Looks like a baseball score,” said Bill. 

u There must be all of one hundred degrees 


226 THE TRAIL MAKERS 

difference between the extreme heat in summer 
and the extreme cold in winter. We’ll call it an 
even hundred to make figuring easy. To multiply 
that fraction by one hundred all we have to do is 
to take a couple of ‘ goose eggs * from Bill’s ball 
score; there still will be plenty left. That gives us 
.000686, which is a little less than seven ten-thou- 
sandths.” 

“ Let’s see,” began Bob. “ There are 5280 feet 
in a mile. One ten-thousandth of 5280 feet is a 
little more than five-tenths of a foot and seven 
times that is thirty-five tenths of a foot, which 
is •” 

“ Great snakes, Bob ! ” groaned Bill. “ Let up, 
can’t you? You make my head ache.” 

“ Anyhow, it is.” 

“ You are right it is,” laughed the supervisor. 
“ Where would you be on a hot day, young man, 
with an expansion of three and a half feet to the 
mile and a solid rail? ” 

“ In swimming,” said Bill. “ Betcher life.” 

“ Do bridges expand in the same way?” Bob 
asked. 

“ Sure thing. Engineers have to allow for that. 
Out on the Columbia Highway, near Portland, 
Oregon, they have built what is called a three- 
hinged flat arch bridge, at Moffat Creek. It is a 


LAYING THE STEEL 


227 


single 170-foot arch and in that distance it only 
rises seventeen feet from a straight line. The cen- 
ter of that arch is four inches higher on the hottest 
days than it is on the coldest, and it doesn’t get 
so very cold there. Believe me, boy, that space 
between the rails is the best little thing we do. If 
it wasn’t for that some train would be wrecked by 
Tennessee sunshine.” 

It was an interesting trip for the boys and the 
work went forward at what to them seemed won- 
derful speed. It was really at the rate of about a 
half mile each day. 

Hour after hour, the sweating negroes could be 
seen struggling forward with the heavy steel, until 
they had reached the place where the rail was to 
be dropped. 

“ All fixed ! ” the “ straw boss ” would chant. 

The line of negroes would stand poised and 
ready. 

" Heave ’er! ” 

Bang, would go the rail, and back the gang 
would start for another. 

Following the track gang came the ballasting 
crew, with gravel or crushed stone in bottom dump 
cars, from which the material was scattered as 
needed along the track. But the boys didn’t see 
that part of the work. 


228 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


It was a great event for them when, the track 
having reached the big ravine below the tunnel, 
the bridge gang arrived one day and began to un- 
load material. Bill forgot his detective work and 
even the great war, for which the United States 
was preparing feverishly, while he watched the 
skilled workers bridge the stream from the abut- 
ments which he had helped to save. 

The bridge gang is furnished by the company 
which builds the bridge — experts, who go from one 
job to another in a special car. The steel for the 
bridge already had been fabricated, — that is, made 
into the desired form and the various parts cut to 
exact size and fit, all ready to be put together. 

The first thing the men did after the material 
had been unloaded was to give all the joints a pro- 
tecting coat of paint. Soon derrick cars were 
brought up. One large flatcar held a heavy hoist- 
ing machine; on another was an air compressor. 
This was to furnish power for driving the rivets 
with air hammers, which work on the same prin- 
ciple as the air drills in the tunnel. Other men 
built shanties and a blacksmith shop. 

When everything was ready “ false-work ” — a 
temporary trestle — was put up. On top of that 
heavy girders were laid, which are “ stringers ** to 
form the bottom of the bridge. Lighter steel was 


LAYING THE STEEL 


229 

placed at the top, called the “ cords.” Then corner 
posts were set up and riveted in; steel braces, called 
“ struts,” were fastened between the girders and 
cords, the men beginning at both ends of the span 
and working toward the center. 

This work took several weeks, during which Lee 
was driving his men with new vigor. With the 
bridge actually going in, the end seemed in sight. 

Then came an incident which set all the blood in 
his veins to tingling and filled him with fresh 
strength and will-power. 

He had gone to his shanty from the office late 
one night, exhausted by the struggle. Too tired 
to undress, he threw himself on the bed. As he 
lay there, trying to relax, he happened to glance 
toward the corner where the detector was con- 
cealed and realized that in the hurry of work Uhl- 
mann and his plots, if there were any, had been 
neglected. 

Wearily, he dragged himself from the bed and 
sat down to the instrument, adjusting the tele- 
phone receivers to his ears. Then every muscle 
grew rigid with the intensity of his emotions. 
There was a faint buzzing sound, broken into 
different lengths to represent the letters of some 
code. 

As he tried to make them out, the buzzing 


230 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


stopped. Long he sat there and listened, but heard 
nothing more. The message, whatever it was, had 
been completed. He had picked up the last few 
words only. He had been too late. 

Although annoying, this did not trouble him 
much. His detector “ worked ” ; that was the main 
thing. Somebody had been sending the waves of a 
wireless message through the night. He had 
these important facts to go on and, smiling grimly 
to himself, he undressed and soon was asleep. 


CHAPTER XX 


UHLMANN DOES HIS “ PLANTING 99 

Could George Lee have taken time for a morning 
spin down the country roads to the neat little home 
of the mysterious Mr. Uhlmann, he would have 
found that soft-handed farmer sitting out in his 
dooryard under a tree, in much the same position 
as when he had waited far into the night some 
weeks before. 

Why should he not sit there in the shade and 
enjoy a Tennessee morning in June? His farm 
work was all well in hand. The little tract of 
ground already gave promise of the coming har- 
vest. Corn was knee-high, its long leaves rustling 
in the breeze. The cotton, in weedless rows, was a 
delight to the eye. The little vegetable garden 
was all that could be desired. 

Uhlmann might not be much of a farmer himself 
but he had the German thoroughness and he knew 
how to make others work. His time had been well 
employed in that direction ever since his fellow 
plotters so hurriedly had left for parts unknown. 


231 


232 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


Once more a team of mules jogged down the 
road and turned in at the Uhlmann gate. Schmidt 
and Wernski jumped from the wagon and saluted. 

“ Cut out the salute,” growled their chief, look- 
ing cautiously around. “ We are farmers here, not 
soldiers.” 

“ There is nobody to see in this God-forsaken 
place,” replied Schmidt. 

“ How do you know there isn’t? Do you keep in 
sight always when doing your work? You 
wouldn’t get very far if you did. You must not 
forget for a minute that you are in enemy country 
in time of war, and can not be too careful.” 

“War is right,” put in Wernski. “They are 
drafting all the men between the ages of 21 and 30. 
That looks like business.” 

“ Ja, 4 looks like,’ ” sneered the other, leading the 
way into the house, 44 but a million men are not an 
army. They are a mob, cannon fodder, that is all. 
How long could a million of such men stand up 
before the trained troops of Germany? It takes 
three years to train a soldier right, and longer still 
to train an officer. So! Let them train; it will 
amuse them. All right; here are a million soldiers, 
— ten million, if you like. What then? Will guns 
shoot three thousand miles? They can’t swim 
across the ocean and they can’t get across. Our 


UHLMANN DOES HIS “ PLANTING ” 233 

submarines will take care of that. Suppose they 
do get across; what then? They will starve. It 
will not long be possible to feed even the armies 
over there now.” 

“ It looks that way,” admitted Schmidt. 

“ Looks that way ? It is that way. The Father- 
land knows what it is about. If Germany had been 
afraid of anything which America could do, this 
country would have been kept out of the war at any 
cost. Bah! America! A nation of fools and 
money grubbers! Swine! A schoolmaster for 
President, ‘too proud to fight!’ He’ll be too sick 
to fight, after we have sunk a few transports 
filled with troops.” 

“ We’ll sink ’em, all right, when the time comes.” 

“ America is too late. She can not possibly do 
,us any more harm than she has been doing already, 
with her money and munitions. Even without our 
brave submarines the war would be over before 
they could train an army and transport it across 
to France. Your work and mine is cut out for us 
in this country. It is to hold back the war prep- 
arations and give the glorious German armies time 
to reach Paris and London. Then, when England 
and France are out of the way, we’ll make short 
work of America. 

“ But enough of that. How about the bridge? ” 


234 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


“ It is nearly finished. I was looking it over last 
night.” 

“ Good. I told you we were farmers here. It 
is about time to begin our planting.” 

“Planting? What planting? ” 

“ Dynamite,” said Uhlmann, with a harsh laugh. 
“ It is easily planted and comes up quick. Schmidt, 
what have you found out? ” 

“ Lee is getting ready to start trains on the 
Fourth of July. He says it will be a good way to 
celebrate.” 

“So soon? He’s a worker, that fellow. He gets 
things done, as you said. Very well. We’ll have 
a little celebration of our own on the same day. 
Noise and fireworks! ‘ Captain Heinrich Uhlmann 
of the Prussian Guards celebrates the Fourth of 
July in America.’ How would that sound in Ger- 
many? ” 

That the spy was greatly pleased with himself 
and his thoughts could be read in his face. 

“ Ja” he went on. “ We’ll wait until the Fourth 
and help them celebrate. They will be too busy 
and excited on that day to notice what we are 
doing.” 

“Where will we do the planting?” asked 
Wernski. “Have you thought of that?” 

“ I think of everything. Between the two spans 


UHLMANN DOES HIS “PLANTING” 235 

on top of the pier you will find a two-inch space. 
Fill that space with dynamite, cover the stuff with 
mud and explode it at the right moment with a 
blasting cap. It will make a fine firecracker.” 

The spy’s description of the cap, with which 
dynamite is exploded, was not a bad one, only it is 
loaded with what is called fulminate of mercury, 
the most powerful of explosives, instead of with 
black powder. A fuse leads up out of this fire- 
cracker, its length depending on how soon it is 
desired to have the cracker go off. Standard fuse, 
as we have seen, burns at the rate of two feet a 
minute. Twenty feet of fuse would give the one 
who lighted it ten minutes in which to make his 
escape. 

Dynamite in order to cause destruction must be 
confined. It must have something to push against 
before it can do any pushing. The narrow space 
where the spans came together on top of the con- 
crete pier would be just the place for an attempt 
to destroy the bridge. The shock caused by the 
exploding cartridge would set off the dynamite 
and the heavy steel would be hurled into the 
ravine, a hopeless wreck. 

As a rule, dynamite requires the explosion of 
such a cap to send it off. It is comparatively safe 
stuff to handle in any ordinary way and men grow 


236 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


careless in using it. They throw it around in a 
manner very alarming to outsiders. It is not un- 
common to see a workman light his pipe with a 
piece of burning dynamite. 

“ You’d better not come around here very often,” 
cautioned Uhlmann, after the “ celebration ” had 
been talked over, “ in the daytime, especially. The 
wireless will be safer. But call me only at four in 
the afternoon and ten o’clock at night. Lee does 
not seem to suspect anything, but we can not be 
too careful. There must be no failure.” 

About the time when the meeting at Uhlmann’s 
was breaking up, Mr. Vreeland drove into Camp 
No. i, on one of his frequent trips of inspection. 
To him Lee outlined his suspicions. 

“ Why haven’t you told me of this before? ” de- 
manded the contractor. 

u We had so little to go on, and you have had so 
much on your mind. I didn’t want to worry you 
needlessly. Now it is different. We know that we 
are on the right track.” 

“Tell me again just what you have found 
out.” 

Lee went over the matter carefully from the be- 
ginning. “We are morally certain,” he concluded, 
“ that Uhlmann is a German spy and that in all 
probability he has been at the bottom of our 


UHLMANN DOES HIS “ PLANTING” 237 

troubles. We have him and his wireless outfits 
spotted. I heard him, or somebody, signaling last 
night; that is, I listened-in just in time to get the 
close of the message, whatever it was.” 

“We could have them arrested for operating 
wireless plants,” said the contractor, thoughtfully. 
“ The Government has ordered all amateur plants 
dismantled. As for the rest, I can’t see that you 
have very much evidence. Still, it might be enough 
for the Secret Service to work on.” 

“ Give my detector a chance first,” urged Lee, 
“ and we’ll bag the whole gang. If Uhlmann is 
what we think he is, the fellow will keep on trying 
to delay the work. . It’s a fool thing to do, in one 
sense, but the Germans have been fools all along, 
whenever they have tried to size up the situation 
in any country but their own.” 

“ Yes, that is the way it looks from here. You 
and I know that Germany committed suicide when 
the United States was goaded into this war; but 
the Germans do not know it. They probably ex- 
pect to hold back our preparations long enough to 
enable them to defeat France and England on the 
West Front.” 

“ I can tell them,” said Lee, earnestly, “ that 
America, single-handed if necessary, will clean up 
Germany, if it takes the last man and the last dot- 


238 THE TRAIL MAKERS 

lar in the country. The United States is more than 

a nation, suh; it is an ideal.” 

“ You will have a chance to tell them after this 
railroad has been finished. The country is going 
to be drained of its young men. Meanwhile, your 
place is here. Well, what do you propose? ” 

“ I am going to catch them in the act. They 
are up to some mischief; that is certain. Things 
have been going along too smoothly of late to last. 
I don’t know what their plan is, but I shall find out, 
and when they pull it off George Lee is going to be 
there, ready for business. We’ll get a wireless 
operator down from the city and have him lis- 
ten-in.” 

Mr. Vreeland sat quiet for a minute, thinking. 
“ I’ll give you a few days, George,” he decided, 
“ but this is too serious a matter to trifle with. 
There is not much about a railroad grade that can 
be damaged, but from what you tell me that man 
Uhlmann is a bad actor and a dangerous man to 
have running around loose. He may have had 
something to do with the fires and explosions in 
various parts of the country. 

“ Still, I don’t like the idea of getting a wireless 
operator down here. It would be easy for Uhl- 
mann to have spies in the camp.” 

“ We’ve got to have somebody. I haven’t time 


UHLMANN DOES HIS “PLANTING” 239 

myself and, even if I had, I am not familiar enough 
with the Morse alphabet. That is what they are 
using, I think, from what little I heard.” 

“ That youngster of mine and Bill Wilson are 
Boy Scouts; a knowledge of the Morse code seems 
to be required of them. Anyhow, they rigged up a 
line at home and were telegraphing back and forth 
all last winter. Why not use them? They seem to 
have discovered about all that has been found out 
so far. Nobody would suspect them.” 

“ And the minute you get anything definite,” he 
added, “ notify the Secret Service people. Don’t 
try to do it all yourself. There must be no slip-up 
on this thing.” 

“ Great snakes, Bob ! ” exclaimed Bill, when the 
delighted boys had been told of the important part 
they were going to play in the little drama. “ We 
won’t do a thing to those fellows. I’ve got it in 
for them, anyhow, on account of what they did to 
me at the Hidden Hut.” 


CHAPTER XXI 


THE BOYS “ LISTEN-IN ” 

George Lee had set his heart on opening the new 
railroad July 4, as a fitting celebration of a great 
day. He was still boy enough to feel the thrill of 
the Nation’s birthday, a day which appeals to red- 
blooded Young America as no other day does or 
can. He was man enough also to be willing to 
fight to defend that freedom which had been 
ushered in by the ringing of Liberty Bell and the 
explosion of fireworks, back in old Philadelphia, in 
1776. 

It seemed to him that the great war, “ to make 
the world safe for democracy,” as the President 
of the United States had described it, was giving a 
new and larger meaning to the holiday and making 
it a world-day, which should be celebrated by all 
free people everywhere, whatever the nation. 

He would have been one of the first to volunteer 
for service overseas had not the contractor con- 
vinced him that he could do more for his country 
and for the Cause by staying at home and pushing 
the building of the railroad. Now that a great 


240 


THE BOYS 41 LISTEN-IN 


241 


National Army was forming and the need for 
American engineers in France would be urgent, he 
felt the call more and more, and only his sense of 
duty kept him at his task. 

“ This railroad is a part of the first line of de- 
fense/’ he kept saying to himself; but he promised 
himself that, the first line of defense once estab- 
lished, nothing would keep him from offering his 
services for overseas duty. It was this thought 
that had helped him to drive forward the work at 
top speed. Fortunately, he had been able to fill 
his various assistants and foremen with the same 
zeal. 

Several weeks would pass before the tunnel could 
be completed, but a workable grade around the 
hill was ready for the steel, and all the way be- 
tween the bridge and the junction with the main- 
line gangs of men were being urged on, day after 
day, to line up the track and get it in shape to 
carry trains in safety. 

A few days more and the bridge w T ould be so 
nearly finished that work trains could creep across, 
carrying steel with which to lay the track to Camp 
No. 1. Beyond it would connect with a similar 
track, which was creeping southward from a 
junction with one of the great railroad systems of 
the country. 


242 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


The deep cut, the last to be started, was far 
from finished, but the heavy cutting could be done 
afterward. Around that hill also, with light grad- 
ing, the railroad was being taken on a temporary 
line. Across the ravine beyond, to be filled with 
material from the cut, a trestle had been built, 
heavy enough to carry the traffic for the time 
being. At the bottom of the ravine it crossed a 
small stream, which would have to be bridged 
later; but the bridge could be built at any time. 

These were busy days, the most difficult of all, 
in one way, for with the completion of the rail- 
road in sight the men, unconsciously perhaps, be- 
gan to “ ease up.” The work always seems to lag 
at the end of a construction job. 

Through it all Lee felt a sense of uneasiness. 
That the shrewd enemy who had caused so much 
delay would strike again, he did not doubt for an 
instant. Where would he strike? That was for 
him to find out, or rather it was for Bob and Bill. 

“ It is up to you, boys,” he told them. “ Red and 
I will help you whenever we can, but our hands are 
more than full with the regular work.” 

“ Leave it to Little Willie,” bragged Bill. 

“Me, too,” promised Bob. 

It was a tiresome task, this “ listening-in ” at the 
detector, and although the boys were faithful and 


THE BOYS “ LISTEN-IN 


243 


Red and Lee helped during the evening hours, they 
could not be on the job every minute. The days 
flew by without result. 

At last the bridge stood ready; the track was 
creeping around the hill and across the trestle. 
The railroad company had been notified that 
traffic might begin July 4 and the officers, no less 
eager than Lee, were preparing to make the cele- 
bration a notable one. Still the detector remained 
silent except that on three days, at exactly four 
o’clock, a buzzing had been heard. The signal, for 
such it seemed to be, had been repeated several 
times, but there had been nothing more. 

It was enough, however, to give Lee an idea. 

“ Some one,” he thought, “ is calling Uhlmann at 
four o’clock, according to arrangement. He must 
be away from home.” 

To settle that point, Red was sent on a flying 
trip down to Uhlmann’s place, with orders to stop 
there and ask for water to put in his car. The 
house was found to be empty. 

Lee was puzzled. Just before four o’clock that 
afternoon he left his work and took Bob’s place at 
the detector. At four precisely a buzzing was 
heard, evidently a signal. It was repeated several 
times; then there was silence as before. 

“ I am sure they are calling Uhlmann,” he told 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


244 

Red. “ It must be that he is expected home and 
they want to talk to him as soon as he comes. We 
ought to hear something worth while, if we wait 
long enough.” 

On the morning of July 3 the two track-laying 
gangs, one working north and the other south, 
were within a mile of each other, and the grade be- 
tween was ready for the steel. The plan was to 
finish track-laying that day up to the last spike. 
This spike, completing the work, so far as opening 
the road to traffic was concerned, would be driven 
on the morning of July 4 by the President of the 
railroad. 

The first train through would bring a special car, 
containing railroad officials and their friends, to- 
gether with Mr. Vreeland, the contractor. This 
would be followed by a freight train, loaded with 
material for the new explosives plant. After that 
it would be a very busy piece of track. 

At four o’clock Bill Wilson was sitting at the 
detector with the telephone receivers over his ears. 
He had been talking to Bob about a little Fourth of 
July celebration of their own, providing Lee would 
let them have a few sticks of dynamite. 

“ Believe me,” Bob was saying, “ there will be 
some noise around here when it goes off.” 

Suddenly Bill stiffened, as a boy does when he 


THE BOYS “ LISTEN-IN 


245 


has been fishing a long time without getting even a 
nibble and then feels a big one tugging at his 
line. 

It was the four o'clock signal, and there had been 
an answering buzz ! 

“Great snakes! ” gasped Bill. “There is some- 
thing doing at last. I am afraid I won’t be able to 
make out what they are saying.” 

Fortunately for him, the unknown sender of the 
message didn’t know much more about sending 
than Bill knew about receiving. He was slow and 
repeated often. 

Bill grabbed pencil and paper and after much lis- 
tening wrote down a series of dots and dashes, 
while Bob looked on in growing excitement. 
When the buzzing had stopped the boys spelled 
out the message, using letters instead of the dots 
and dashes of the Morse alphabet. 

The message, whatever it was, was meaningless. 
It seemed only a jumble of letters. 

With sinking hearts they hurried out to find Lee 
and by good luck met him coming in from the 
work. 

“ There is nothing doing, George,” called Bob. 
“ We can’t read it.” 

“ Did you get something? ” asked Lee, excitedly. 
“ Let me see it.” 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


246 

Bill silently handed him the paper. He was too 
disappointed for words. 

The superintendent eagerly scanned the jumble, 
a puzzled frown deepening on his forehead. Sud- 
denly his face cleared. 

“ Why, it’s German, of course ! ” he exclaimed. 

With growing excitement he studied the mes- 
sage, while the boys watched him impatiently. 

“Great snakes, George!” complained Bill, 
finally. “ Have a heart, can’t you ! What’s it all 
about? ” 

“ Here is what it says in plain English,” George 
told them, “ as near as I can make out. I am 
pretty rusty on my German: 

“ ‘ Bridge planted. Celebration about nine 
morning.’ ” 

“But what does it mean?” asked Bob. “The 
celebration is set for ten.” 

“ It means,” said Lee, solemnly, “ that you boys 
have saved the day. The scoundrels plan to blow 
up the bridge tomorrow morning at nine. The 
dynamite already has been planted. Great Scott, 
boys, it would mean a delay of weeks.” 

The first thing wmch Lee did was to send Red 
in the car to the city with urgent messages to the 
contractor and to the nearest officer of the Depart- 
ment of Justice. He feared to trust the local wires. 


THE BOYS “ LISTEN-IN ” 247 

Camp No. 1 might be filled with spies, for all he 
knew. 

That duty done, he considered what to do next. 
To save the bridge would be an easy matter. What 
he wanted was to catch the spies in an attempt to 
blow it up, and that would be more difficult. 
Whatever he did, he must make no move that 
would cause the least suspicion that the plot had 
been discovered. 

It was easy to understand what had happened. 
The work of track-laying had passed far beyond 
the bridge and, except for the men in the tunnel, 
the structure was entirely alone during the day. 
At night a watchman went out from the tunnel 
every hour. The spies had planted their dynamite 
during the day, rather than risk discovery at night, 
when a light at the bridge would be visible from 
the tunnel. 

But, that being true, why had they not planned 
to blow it up during the night instead of waiting? 
Lee puzzled over this, until suddenly there 
flashed into his mind an explanation which made 
him turn pale and then flush with anger. 

“ Nine o’clock !” The special train filled with 
railroad officials would be due to arrive at the 
bridge at about that hour, on its way to the place 
where the opening ceremonies were to be held. It 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


248 

would stop at Camp No. 1 to pick up the superin- 
tendent and some of the more important men and 
was expected to arrive at the appointed place a 
little before ten o’clock. There was to be an 
attempt to wreck the train as well as blow up the 
bridge ! 

Lee decided that he would take a look at the 
bridge the first thing. Red was away with the car, 
but the superintendent had been intending to make 
a final inspection of that part of the line, and it 
could not be done properly except by walking. He 
slipped his pistol into his pocket; then, having left 
orders for Red to meet him with the car opposite 
the tunnel, started out. 

The two boys waylaid him before he had 
reached the grade, and insisted on being taken 
along. 

After all, it could do no harm and George was 
glad of their company. So the boys went with 
him. 

Before reaching the bridge, Lee cautioned them 
that it was possible they were being watched. 

“ Don’t seem to be looking for trouble,” he said. 
“ If they find out that we suspect them, it will 
spoil our whole plan.” 

Acting as if on an ordinary inspection trip, Lee 
led the way into the ravine, pointing out to the 


THE BOYS “ LISTEN-IN 


249 


boys the graceful steel arches of the bridge and 
other features which delighted the eyes of the en- 
gineer. 

Once at the bottom of the ravine, however, out 
of sight from either side, he suddenly drew out his 
field glass and began a careful inspection of the 
structure, beginning at the abutments and pier and 
working up, moving about to change his view- 
point. 

Five minutes passed in silence; then he gave an 
exclamation and handed the glass to Bob. 

“ See if you notice anything which looks 
like a string, hanging from the top of that 
pier.” 

Bob looked and after a moment nodded. 

“What is it?” asked Bill, after he too had 
looked. 

“ I suspect that it is a fuse. We’ll make sure by 
walking across the bridge, but I don’t want you to 
look in that direction at all. Look somewhere else. 
Leave that to me.” 

After climbing to the top of the ravine again, 
they started across. Lee did not seem to be look- 
ing at anything in particular, but simply to be mak- 
ing a final inspection of the bridge in general. He 
passed the pier, seemingly without a glance in that 
direction, but nothing escaped his keen eyes. 


250 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


“ It’s a fuse, all right,” he told them, when they 
had gone back and were making their way to the 
tunnel. “ The space between the spans is loaded 
with enough dynamite to throw the whole bridge 
into the ravine, and the train with it.” 


CHAPTER XXII 


FOURTH OF JULY 

Fourth of July, 1917, was a great day in many 
ways, with a meaning which it never had before. 
On that day, for example, came news that the first 
American troops had arrived in Europe. On the 
American side of the Atlantic the entire young 
manhood of the Nation, between the ages of 21 
and 30, were about to be enrolled in defense of 
liberty and the honor of their country. The 
glorious deeds which that new National Army and 
the United States Navy were to perform a little 
later will be written large in history. 

For the time being, however, this particular 
Fourth of July held only one meaning for a certain 
young engineer, although of draft age. It was the 
day which was to crown George Lee’s first big 
work with success. Lee’s position had been much 
like that of a boy, who, having played on “ scrub ” 
football teams all the way up through the grades, 
suddenly finds himself half-back on the High 
School Eleven. No football player ever worked 
harder to “ make good ” for the glory of his school 


251 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


252 

and the credit of himself than Lee had worked for 
his Country and his own reputation. 

In work, as in play, he believed in “ hitting the 
line hard,” as one of our great Presidents once ex- 
pressed it. Even while still resident engineer for 
the railroad company, he had put all that was in 
him into the work, all the time, regardless of the 
amount of pay he was receiving or whether his 
chief was watching him or not. 

“ I owe it to myself. It is the only way I can 
grow,” he had explained to a friend. 

His reward came sooner than he had hoped for, 
when in the presence of a great National crisis he 
was chosen to take charge of an important and 
difficult work. 

Lee awakened early that Fourth of July morning 
and lay in his cot for a short time, going over in 
his mind every detail of the three months’ strug- 
gle, made even harder by the plots of an unseen 
enemy. 

“ I have made good,” he exulted. “ In spite of 
plots, the railroad is ready for traffic two days be- 
fore the limit set by the Government, and today the 
mysterious Mr. Uhlmann gets his.” 

Red Hurley, in his cot in the same shanty, 
greeted the dawn of July 4 with much the same 
feeling. He had worked very hard for the man 


FOURTH OF JULY 253 

who had given him a chance. He, too, felt the 
satisfaction of having “ made good,” which is no 
small reward in itself. Added to that, was joy over 
the success of George Lee, whom he had learned 
to love as well as admire. 

“ Now, if we only can get Uhlmann,” he thought. 
“ He's a slippery rascal and a bad actor. I believe 
he’d blow up the whole railroad and the camp with 
it, if he could, and he’ll do it, too, if we don’t step 
lively.” 

As if in answer to his thoughts, there came a 
roar just outside the shanty which rocked the 
building and so startled Red that when he came to 
his senses he was standing in the middle of the 
room, looking wildly about. 

Lee, in his pajamas, pistol in hand, jumped for 
the door. As he did so, there arose from under 
the window outside a blood-curdling yell, sounding 
as if all the fiends in all the story books had turned 
loose their voices. 

At the first sound George and Red rushed 
toward the window; then they stopped, looked at 
each other and burst into laughter. 

“ Hurrah for the Fourth of July ! ” called George. 
“ We’ll be out in a minute, boys.” 

Bob and Bill had begun their celebration. 

It was a holiday with full pay at the camp and all 


254 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


up and down the line^ The men had worked hard 
and faithfully, and had earned a rest. At the re- 
quest of the superintendent, made at the last 
moment, extra coaches were to be added to the 
special train, in order that the foremen and all 
who desired might be present at the driving of the 
last spike. 

“ I want them to feel that they are a part of it,” 
he had urged. “ The road is still far from com- 
pleted and there must be no let-down after today.” 

X 

Just before nine o’clock the men began to gather 
near the railroad, looking eagerly down the track 
for the coming train. The chatter at the Tower of 
Babel after the “ confusion of tongues,” de- 
scribed in the Old Testament, must have sounded 
much like the babel of voices in the waiting throng. 

Through the crowd Lee moved, smiling with sat- 
isfaction and giving hearty greetings right and left. 
He looked for the train with an eagerness which no 
workman could feel. 

Would they succeed in catching the spies? That 
was the question uppermost in his thoughts. To 
have them escape would take some of the joy out 
of life. He himself had done all that seemed 
humanly possible. With the exception of Red, not 
a soul in the camp, not even faithful Jack Shum- 
way, had been told of the plot to blow up the 


FOURTH OF JULY 255 

bridge. Red and the boys, he knew, would not 
talk. That Uhlmann had spies in the camp seemed 
more than probable, but Lee did not believe that 
the shrewdest of spies could have an inkling of his 
counterplot, so careful had been his planning. 

Meanwhile, along the trail of steel which 
stretched northward mile after mile, from its 
junction with the main-line, speeded the expected 
train. Above the rumbling of the wheels and the 
pounding of the rail joints could be heard the 
snorting of the locomotive ; land screech after 
screech awakened the echoes as the engineer joy- 
ously pulled on the rope which controlled the 
whistle. The hills and valleys of that part of Ten- 
nessee never before had heard such sounds. 

The inmates of the homes within hearing rushed 
to their doors. Those sounds marked the dawn of 
a new era for them, and they knew it. 

In the course of time a guard of soldiers, hidden 
in the ravine below the bridge since the night be- 
fore, caught the distant signal of the approaching 
train, and became even more alert in their 
watching. 

They were not the only ones who had heard the 
far-off whistle. Out of the woods sauntered a man, 
lighting a cigar as he walked along, and puffing 
vigorously. At the bridge a moment later he 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


256 

paused, as if wondering whether to go over the 
finished structure or to climb down through the 
ravine where a narrow foot-bridge of a single plank 
led across the stream, close to the pier. 

Another faint whistle of the still distant train 
apparently decided him to take the foot-bridge. 
He quickly clambered down into the ravine and 
hastened to the pier, behind which dangled the fuse 
of Uhlmann’s giant “ firecracker.” 

“ It would burn too long,” he muttered to him- 
self. “ They will be here in five minutes.” 

Quickly he pulled from his pocket a stout line, 
at one end of which a heavy piece of iron had been 
fastened securely. Holding the loose end in his 
left hand, with his right he threw the weight with 
careful aim, so that it wrapped the cord around one 
of the steel rods of the bridge. To climb up, hand 
over hand, was but the work of a moment. 

About eight feet below the top of the pier he 
steadied himself, let go with one hand and, grasp- 
ing the swaying fuse, pulled it forward against his 
lighted cigar. 

An instant later, while the fire sputtered along 
the fuse toward the hidden dynamite, he reached 
the ground and started to run. 

“Hurrah for the Fourth of July!” he laughed 
to himself; then stopped, as if turned to stone. 



“Throw Up Your Hands!” 

















* 











































* 






































































- • 



































257 


FOURTH OF JULY 

“ Halt! ” rang out a voice. 

Three soldiers stepped into view. The one who 
had spoken had him “ covered ” with an automatic 
pistol; the other two, with their rifles. There was 
no chance for escape. 

“ Throw up your hands ! ” 

Schmidt, Uhlmann’s right-hand man, put up his 
arms obediently, but; even as he did so, in imagina- 
tion he could see the sputtering fuse, burning two 
feet every minute toward the waiting dynamite. 
Another two minutes, and it would be too late to 
save the bridge. 

“What are you doing here?” 

“ I am one of the workmen,” lied Schmidt, in the 
best English he could speak. “ I was sent to make 
a final inspection of the bridge, before the train 
arrives.” 

“ Who sent you? ” 

“ George Lee, the superintendent.” 

“Well, we’ll take away your gun, anyhow, it 
might go off accidentally and hurt somebody.” 

“ You have no right to my gun,” said Schmidt, 
calmly, “ and you are keeping me from my work.” 

His one thought was to hold the attention of 
the guards until the burning fuse could fire the 
cartridge. In the confusion which would follow the 
explosion he hoped to escape. 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


258 

As the spy had planned, one of the soldiers 
stepped forward and wasted precious moments 
searching his pockets. 

Three minutes had -passed. The train now was 
very near the bridge, although coming slowly, 
feeling its way over the new track. 

With a laugh of triumph, Schmidt turned to his 
captors. 

“You fool Americans !” he snarled. “You 
watched Europe burn for two years and a half 
before you acted. Listen ! I, Conrad Schmidt, say 
it. In less than one minute, while you swine stand 
there gawping, that bridge will be blown into the 
ravine. I think the train will be about in the mid- 
dle of it when it happens. You have caught me, 
Ja , but you can not the bridge save.” 

The soldiers grinned and said nothing, for with 
a final shriek the train had stopped at the edge of 
the ravine and the passengers were hurrying down 
into the hollow. •? 

“Have you got them?” they shouted. 

“We caught this bird in the act,” said the cor- 
poral of the guard. “ The other squads probably 
have rounded up the rest.” 

Schmidt looked dazed. The four minutes had 
passed and the bridge still stood, a beautiful thing 
to look at in the sunshine. There had been a flare 


259 


FOURTH OF JULY 

of flame when the fire reached the dynamite, but no 
explosion. He could not understand it. The stuff 
had been planted by himself and he knew that the 
work had been done well. 

“ It’s all right, Heinie,” jeered the corporal, read- 
ing his thoughts. “ That was a nice little Fourth 
of July celebration you were going to pull off, only 
it was postponed last night when we took away 
the blasting cap. Never mind; we’ll have a cele- 
bration a little later, and Conrad Schmidt will be 
facing a firing squad.” 

Securely handcuffed and under guard, the crest- 
fallen spy was placed on the train and with a part- 
ing shriek of defiance the locomotive started once 
more along the trail. 

“We’ll pick up the others when we come back,” 
the conductor shouted to the two soldiers who had 
been left behind. 

Three o’clock had passed before the special train 
came into view on the return trip, after the last 
spike had been driven with proper ceremony and 
the guests had put away one of the cook’s best din- 
ners at Camp No. i. 

“Some eats, Bill!” Bob had exclaimed to his 
friend, on leaving the table. “ I’d just as soon 
as not drive the last spike every day in the 
week.” 


26 o 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


The boys had been permitted to go with Lee on 
the special train as far as the bridge, where Red 
was to meet them with the car. All three looked 
out of the window, eagerly, as the train moved 
along. They had watched the railroad grow from 
the beginning and every scene which they passed 
held for them, and for Lee especially, an interest 
and meaning which it could hold for no one 
else. 

At the bridge a little group of guards waited 
with their prisoners and the train stopped to take 
them aboard. 

“ There is Old Sneeze-twice ! ” exclaimed Bill, 
pointing out Wernski, who a moment later was 
pushed into a seat beside Schmidt. 

“ And there is the guy who gave us a drink when 
we found the second water tank,” said Bob. “ He 
didn’t seem like such a bad fellow, but I suppose he 
was one of them.” 

“ Where is Uhlmann?” demanded Lee. 

“We couldn’t find him,” explained one of the 
men, “ but we’ll get him yet.” 

The escape of the chief spy and trouble-maker 
was a great disappointment to George and to his 
two young friends, who had worked so hard to 
spoil Uhlmann’s plans. 


26 i 


FOURTH OF JULY 

“ I’ll bet he was the guy who kicked me that time 
at the Hidden Hut,” mourned Bill. “ I ’most know 
he was. I had it in for him.” 

That Uhlmann should have escaped seemed al- 
most unbelievable. Guards had been thrown 
around his house before daylight and every road 
leading from that vicinity had been watched 
closely. But the house was found to be vacant 
when they entered and, although the country was 
searched for miles around, no trace of the spy could 
be found, other than an abandoned team of mules. 
The most that could be done was to destroy the 
radio plants and that was done thoroughly. 

It was learned, however, that a badly frightened 
negro, going to work in the early morning, 
claimed to have seen the “ devil ” flying through 
the air and to have heard a strange noise, as of an 
automobile passing overhead with its muffler wide 
open. 

“ It was de debbil, shuah’s yo’ bo’n,” he in- 
sisted, earnestly, when questioned about the mat- 
ter. “Yes, sah, dis yer niggah done see de debbil 
go by in his char’ot, way up in de a’r.” 

“ What did you do? ” 

“ Ah thought he done come fer me, at fust, an 
Ah shuah did run. Yes, sah, dis niggah suttenly 
did put for de bresh. Hit’s a warnin’, boss. Some- 


262 THE TRAIL MAKERS 

one’s gwine get killed aroun’ heah, shuah’s you’ 

bo’n.” 

“ What did the devil look like? 99 
“ Like a big bird, sah. Yes, sah, he done look 
like a powerful big buzza’d, an’ as he flew Ah could 
heah a right sma’t hummin’.” 


CHAPTER XXIII 


THE LAST SPIKE 

In the building of a railroad there is often a cele- 
bration at the beginning of the work and another 
at the close. At the start, the President of the 
railroad, or some other important man, removes 
the first shovelful of earth, while a crowd looks on ; 
then there is speech-making, and afterward the 
shovel, properly labeled, is hung up in the office of 
the company. 

On completion of the railroad, a similar celebra- 
tion is held at the driving of the last spike. Some- 
times the spike to be driven is gold or silver plated. 
After the crowd has gone home a section man 
comes along, pulls out the gold spike and drives in 
another. Then the gold spike is hung up with the 
shovel. 

This driving of a railroad spike is no easy task, 
although it looks simple enough. Watch a brawny 
section man swing his great hammer with both 
hands and bring it down on the head of a spike, 
forcing it into the hard wood of the tie, and it 
seems the simplest thing in the world. Bob and 
263 


264 THE TRAIL MAKERS 

Bill often had watched it done while the track was 
being laid. 

“ It’s a cinch,” declared Bill; but when he tried 
it once he found that it wasn’t so easy. The head 
of the hammer, he discovered, was only about an 
inch and a half in diameter and rounding, at 
that. 

Now they stood watching the President of the 
G. A. & R. Railroad try his hand at it. A large 
crowd had gathered at the place where the two 
stretches of track joined, including most of the 
men from Camp No. i. The two boys and Red 
were in the very front row. 

When everything was ready, the President lifted 
his hammer and, to show that he knew what he 
was about, swung it back and forth, much as a boy 
swings a ball club while getting ready to knock a 
home-run. The spike already had been started 
into the tie. 

After measuring the distance by tapping the 
spike gently, the President swung the hammer with 
great force. 

Bang! it came down, missing the head of the 
spike and making a great dent in the tie, while the 
crowd yelled its delight. The President flushed a 
little and tried again. 

Biff! went the hammer, this time striking the 


THE LAST SPIKE 265 

spike a glancing blow and making a hole in the 
tie on the other side. 

“ I am just gauging the distance/' explained the 
President to his friends, who were “ guying ” him. 

Soon, however, the spike was in place and, hav- 
ing mounted the platform at the rear of the coach, 
while the men gathered around, he made a little 
speech. He told how important the railroad was 
to be in the war preparations of the Government; 
said some nice things about the work which had 
been done, and suggested that “ all would be glad 
to hear from Mr. Robert Vreeland, who had built 
the road.” 

“ But I am only the contractor,” added Mr. 
Vreeland, after he had spoken a few minutes. “ The 
real man on the job has been the walking boss. 
George Lee has been the brains and driving force, 
which have produced this railroad in double-quick 
time. George, come up here and show yourself.” 

There was great cheering as Lee, somewhat con- 
fused, climbed upon the platform; and then silence, 
for the superintendent had held up one hand for 
quiet. He talked a few minutes about the work 
and the speed with which it had been done. 

“ What I have been saying,” he concluded, 
turning to the railroad officials, “ has been more 
particularly to the men who have built this rail- 


266 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


road rather than to you men who will operate it. 
I want to say to you right here that all patriots do 
not wear khaki. These men who stand before me 
have been heroes. I have driven them unmerci- 
fully and, like true soldiers, they have put the best 
there is in them into the task and made the com- 
pletion of the work in record time possible.” 

“Tell them about Uhlmann, George/’ called out 
Mr. Vreeland. 

Beginning with the attempt of Wernski to wreck 
the steamshovel Lee told the whole story down to 
the effort to blow up the bridge that very morning. 
He told the tale simply, generously giving Red 
Hurley and the two boys credit for the discovery 
of the plots, while the workmen listened in amaze- 
ment and growing anger. 

“We have one of those German spies in the 
coach,” he added, “ and we hope that the others, 
including Uhlmann himself, are under arrest by 
this time. They tried to have a little Fourth of 
July celebration of their own this morning, but, 
thanks to these boys, we beat them to it. 

“ Men, we are Americans, you and I, no matter 
where we happened to be born. To us the Fourth 
of July means liberty, not murder and destruction. 
This war, on which the United States has entered, 
is a war in defense of liberty, not for conquest — 


THE LAST SPIKE 


267 

liberty here and liberty over there, where today 
the dear old fathers and mothers of many of you 
men, with tears streaming down their faces, are 
thanking God for the great country which has 
given their sons a chance, and are looking to this 
wonderful America for help in their hour of need. 

“The Kaiser has said that he will stand no non- 
sense from the United States after the war. Your 
loyal work and this railroad are a part of America’s 
answer to that challenge. Our strengthened Navy 
and the mighty National Army now forming are 
the final answer. Woe to that Kaiser, who can not 
read the signs of the times! His doom is sealed. 
Woe to the spies whom he dared send into this 
land of freedom by the hundreds of thousands, 
even in the days of our neutrality! We’ll ’’ 

A roar of angry voices drowned the remainder of 
his words, much to Lee’s surprise. Schmidt, the 
spy, who had been left alone for a minute while 
his guard was listening to the speech, had crept to 
the door of the car and was trying to slink away 
unseen. 

Frightened at the anger of the men, the fellow 
climbed back into the coach, when he saw that 
escape was impossible. 

“Hang the spy! Hang him!” some one 
shouted. 


268 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


The cry was taken up by the other workmen and 
they made a rush for the car. 

Conrad Schmidt had never been nearer death 
than at that moment. In vain did Lee order back 
the frenzied men. In vain did Red and Jack Shum- 
way threaten and implore. They reached the car. 
They began to clamber up the steps. 

Suddenly, with a jerk which almost threw the 
superintendent backward, the train started down 
the track and soon left the crowd behind. The 
few men who had climbed the steps, finding that 
they were alone, jumped off. 

The starting of the train was due to the presence 
of mind of Mr. Vreeland, the contractor. At the 
first outbreak he had run forward to where he 
could be seen and given a signal that the engineer 
had been quick to obey. 

Lee, with Red and the two boys, drove back to 
camp that afternoon, after leaving the special train 
at the bridge, feeling a sense of mingled joy and 
disappointment. The last spike had been driven; 
the railroad was in operation, and he was free to 
accept service with the army overseas. The draft, 
to be made July 20, now could take its course, so 
far as he was concerned, or, if the Government pre- 


THE LAST SPIKE 269 

ferred, he would enlist in one of the regiments of 
engineers. 

True, there was a great deal of work to be done 
before the railroad could be called finished, but he 
had done his full duty. An older man could take 
hold where he had left off. 

Three of the plotters were on their way to jail 
and whatever punishment might be in store for 
them. There would be no further danger from that 
direction. But the chief spy, the smooth Mr. Uhl- 
mann, had escaped, and this fact took some of the 
joy out of life. 

“Never mind, George,” comforted Red. “We 
drove him away, anyhow. He won’t give us any 
more trouble. Leave it to the Secret Service. 
They will get him yet.” 

“ I wish I could be sure of it,” said Lee, gloomily, 
“ but somehow I have a feeling that we haven’t 
seen the last of that fellow. He is no ordinary 
chap.” 

“ What can he do? The railroad is running and 
every bridge is guarded. The Government is tak- 
ing no chances. You should worry.” 

“Just the same, I’d give a lead nickel to know 
where he is now and what he is up to.” 

Uhlmann that morning had escaped capture 
wholly by chance. Feeling that the blowing up of 


270 


THE TRAIL MAKERS 


the bridge and the possible capture of Schmidt 
and Wernski would make it unsafe for him to re- 
main longer in the neighborhood, he had prepared 
for instant flight on the night before. He could 
not sleep after he had finished packing and sat out 
under the tree a long time, planning for the future 
when the war would have been won and he could 
return to Berlin for his reward. The destruction 
of the bridge would leave him free to attend to 
Other “work,” meaning the firing of certain muni- 
tion plants. This would be easy, after the reports 
which his two men had brought him. 

But this time there must be no bungling. Fail- 
ure might mean the ruin of his own future. Hein- 
rich Uhlmann would be disgraced in the eyes of 
those higher up in Germany’s spy system. 

“ I myself must make sure,” he decided. “ It is 
a fine night for a drive and I can not sleep.” 

He hitched up his team and started down the 
lonely road toward the bridge. It was a long ride 
through the darkness, but he knew the road well 
and finally reached a point opposite the bridge 
without mishap. Having hitched his team, he 
made his way through a wilderness of under- 
growth, guided by the North Star, until he came to 
the railroad; then crawled out on the bridge. 

He had to crawl. It was too dark to do any- 


THE LAST SPIKE 271 

thing else and he was afraid to risk a light. With- 
out a sound, he carefully felt his way across to the 
pier and put one hand down into the narrow space 
between the spans. 

The dynamite was there in place and a long fuse 
dangled into the blackness below. 

The spy smiled grimly as he thought of the 
morrow, and in his mind pictured the plunge into 
the ravine, — bridge and train, twisted steel and 
mangled men. 

“ Too bad that Lee won’t be there,” he thought, 
“ but Vreeland will be on the train. That is some- 
thing.” 

He was tempted not to wait; to light the 
fuse himself, then and there, but he had set his 
heart on the Fourth of Juty “ celebration ” and the 
destruction of the train, if possible. Besides, it 
would be better that Schmidt should take the 
risk. 

“ I’ll show these fools what it means to go 
against the Fatherland,” he muttered, as he 
crawled back. 

About to stand erect at the end of the bridge, a 
noise in the ravine startled him. He heard voices. 
The guard below was being changed. 

“ There is not much use in watching tonight,” 
some one was saying, “ for the show won’t be 


272 THE TRAIL MAKERS 

pulled off until nine tomorrow, but orders are 

orders.” 

In that one sentence Uhlmann learned of the dis- 
covery of the plot and the failure of his plans, and 
he realized that he must make his escape at once. 
If the plot was known, then his own part in it must 
be known also. 

He dared not return home, but made his way as 
quickly as he could to the place where his airplane 
lay hidden, and there waited until daylight would 
make a safe flight possible. 

Where to go, was the question. The whole 
countryside would be aroused and on the lookout 
for him and he could not go far in an airplane, even 
in that wilderness, without being seen and traced. 
The probable fate of Schmidt and Wernski did not 
interest him, but he cursed the folly that led him 
to wait for the Fourth of July, for it came to him 
suddenly that the five o’clock train on which he 
had hoped to escape did not run on holidays. 

There was no help for it. He would have to hide 
himself until the following day. He could think of 
but one place where he would be both safe and 
comfortable. At Bill’s “ Hidden Hut ” there was 
food, left for just such a need, and little chance of 
discovery. Nobody would think of looking for him 
so close to Camp No. I. 


THE LAST SPIKE 


273 

It was a long wait in the silence of the wilderness 
through the following day, but darkness came 
again at last. A good sleep in the hut; a short 
flight to the station in the early morning before 
people were stirring, and he soon would be on his 
way to safety. 

The uncertainty of what had happened at the 
bridge troubled him. 

“ I must know,” he thought. “ Unless I know I 
can not plan.” 

“ Ja, it is the only way ,” he decided. “ My man 
can not come to me. I shall go to him. It will be 
safe enough at midnight, after the holiday.” 

A little before midnight he started for Camp No. 
I, up the trail and along the road which Bob had 
taken on the night of his wild ride. 

The camp was asleep and in darkness. Work 
had to start again in the early morning and 
after a day of celebration all had gone to their 
rest. 

No, not all. A light streamed from the office 
window. At a table, toiling while the others slept 
that there might be no delays in the morning, sat 
George Lee and Red Hurley. 

As Uhlmann glimpsed the superintendent 
through the open window, saw sitting there the 
man who had outwitted him and brought ruin to 


274 THE TRAIL MAKERS 

his plans and hopes, a wave of fury passed over 
him. 

“ I’ll get him if I swing for it,” he snarled, and 
reached for his pistol. 

Surely, Providence was watching over George 
Lee that night, as, all unconscious that Death was 
peering in at the window, he gave a sigh of 
relief and folded up his papers. His task was 
finished. 

For almost the first time in his young life Bill 
Wilson had found himself unable to sleep. The 
night was hot and he lay tossing on his bed, think- 
ing over the exciting events of the day. Perhaps 
the very silence of the camp served to keep him 
awake, for he was used to hearing the noise of the 
steamshovel, now deep in the rock, and the mon- 
ster was at rest. He arose and went to the door. 
He, too, saw the light in the office and knew that 
Lee or Red, or both, must be working there. 

Without any clear idea why he did so, Bill stole 
out into the night and made his way with bare 
feet toward the office. He had a hazy notion that 
he would try to scare his friends. 

Nearing the window, he was startled to see dimly 
the form of a man standing there and peering in 
at the superintendent. As he looked, the figure 
raised one arm and pointed something at Lee — 


THE LAST SPIKE 


275 


something that had shone for an instant, as a ray 
of light caught the barrel. 

With a wild shriek of terror, Bill hurled himself 
forward at the man’s legs and clung there, des- 
perately. At the same moment the man pulled the 
trigger and the report of the pistol startled the 
camp. 

Cursing, Uhlmann struck the boy, who was 
clinging to his legs and shouting for help. It was 
a savage blow, struck with the butt of the pistol. 
Then he threw Bill to one side, where he fell 
heavily and lay still. 

It was now or never with the spy. The camp 
was aroused and, bounding out of the office, came 
Lee and Hurley. Thanks to poor Bill, lying there 
so quiet, the bullet had gone wild. 

That shot, which he knew had been intended for 
him, and the agonized cry of his young friend, had 
turned Lee into a madman. 

“ There he goes, George,” exclaimed Red, as 
running footsteps were heard. 

“ Look after Bill,” snapped Lee. “ That chap 
will settle with me.” 

Through the darkness they ran, Lee gaining with 
every jump. He was an active man and more 
familiar with the ground. Twice Uhlmann turned 
and fired, the only effect being to make Lee run 


276 THE TRAIL MAKERS 

the faster. The spy dared not stop to aim, not 
knowing that his enemy had no weapon, but shot 
toward the noise, and then hurried on over the 
uneven ground. 

Nearer and nearer came his pursuer. The 
superintendent himself hardly was conscious that 
he had no weapon. Bill’s cry of terror still rang 
in his ears; his one thought was to get his strong 
hands about the throat of the man running there. 

Then, with a suddenness which caused Lee to 
stop in his tracks, the spy gave a wild shriek of 
fright and despair; there came a sound of falling 
dirt and gavel; a thud from below, and silence. 

In his flight through the darkness, Uhlmann had 
run over the edge of the deep cut. 

They found him shortly afterward, lying where 
he had fallen upon the jagged rock, terribly injured, 
but still alive. Silently, they bore the broken form 
to Lee’s own shanty. As they laid him down on 
the superintendent’s cot, the spy opened his eyes 
and glared wildly around. 

What he was thinking they could not know, but 
as he recognized Lee, bending over him, a fierce 
gleam came into his eyes. 

“ Deutschland iiber Alles! ” he gasped, and died. 


According to his good friend, the camp phy- 


THE LAST SPIKE 


277 


sician, Bill Wilson owed his life to an uncommonly 
thick head. He had received a fearful blow, but 
fortunately the skull had not been broken. 

Red Hurley had found him lying unconscious on 
the ground and carried him to his tent, where he 
was left in Bob’s charge while Red ran for the doc- 
tor. The lad was out of his head for several days, 
much to the alarm of Lee, who was spending with 
him every minute he could spare from the work. 

Finally, one day, as the superintendent and Bob 
sat there quietly talking, they heard a feeble voice 
say, 

“ Hello, George.” 

Bill had come back to life. A little later, when 
he had learned the fate of the spy, he was quiet 
for a moment; then exclaimed, 

“ Anyhow, I am glad that he didn’t get away. I 
’most know he was the guy who kicked me that 
time in the Hidden Hut.” 

He remained still for so long they thought he 
had dropped off to sleep; then he spoke again. 

“ Great snakes, Bob! ” said he. “ You must get 
your father to let you go back to Bob’s Hill with 
me. We’re some trail makers, you and I. Say, 
I’ll bet you could hang a hat on Skinny’s eyes when 
he hears about all the doings down here in 
Tennessee.” 









































































* 































COMPANION STORIES OF COUNTRY LIFE 

FOR BOYS £y CHARLES P. (BURTON 


THE BOYS OF BOB’S HILL 

Illustrated by George A. Williams. 12mo. $1.35 net. 

A lively stOTy of a party of boys in a small New England 
town. 

*' A first-rate juvenile ... a real story for the live human boy — any 
boy will read it eagerly to the end . . . quite thrilling adventures.” — 
Chicago Record-Herald. 

THE BOB’S CAVE BOYS 

Illustrated by Victor Perard. $1.35 net. 

“ It would be hard to find anything better in the literature of New 
England boy life. Healthy, red-blooded, human boys, full of fun, 
into trouble and out again, but frank, honest, and clean.” — The Con • 
gregationalist. 

THE BOB’S HILL BRAVES 

Illustrated by H. S. DeLay. 12mo. $1.35 net. 

The “ Bob’s Hill ” band spend a vacation in Illinois, where 
they play at being Indians, hear thrilling tales of real Indians, 
and learn much frontier history. A history of especial inter- 
est to “ Boy Scouts.” 

“ Merry youngsters. Capital. Thrilling tales of the red men and 
explorers. These healthy red-blooded. New England boys.” — Phila- 
delphia Press. 

THE BOY SCOUTS OF BOB’S HILL 

Illustrated by Gordon Grant. 12mo. $1.35 net. 

The “ Bob’s Hill ” band organizes a Boy Scouts band and 
have many adventures. Mr. Burton brings in tales told around 
a camp-fire of La 'Salle, Joliet, the Louisiana Purchase, and 
the Northwestern Reservation. 

CAMP BOB’S HILL 

Illustrated by Gordon Grant. $1.35 net. 

A tale of Boy Scouts on their summer vacation. 

THE RAVEN PATROL OF BOB’S HILL 

Illustrated by Gordon Grant. $1.35 net. 

The account of a camping trip of the Raven Patrol of the 
Boy Scouts to the Massachusetts coast, with much real boy 
fun and wholesome adventure. 


HENRY. HOLT AND COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS NEW YORK 


By ALFRED BISHOP MASON 


TOM STRONG, WASHINGTON’S SCOUT* 

Illustrated. $1.30 net. 

A story of adventure. The principal characters, a boy and 
a trapper, are in the Revolutionary army from the defeat at 
Brooklyn to the victory at Yorktown. 

“The most important events of the Revolution and much general his- 
torical information are woven into this interesting and very well con- 
structed story of Tom and a trapper, who serve their country bravely 
and well. Historical details are correctly given .” — American Library 
Association Booklet. 

/ 

TOM STRONG, BOY-CAPTAIN f 

Illustrated. $1,30 net. 

Tom Strong and a sturdy old trapper take part in such 
stirring events following the Revolution as the Indian raid 
with Crawford and a flat-boat voyage from Pittsburgh to 
New Orleans, etc. 

TOM STRONG, JUNIOR 

Illustrated. $1.30 net. 

The story of the son of Tom Strong in the young United 
States. Tom sees the duel between Alexander Hamilton and 
Aaron Burr; is in Washington during the presidency of Jef- 
ferson; is on board of the “ Clermont” on its first trip, and 
serves in the United States Navy during the War of 1812. 

TOM STRONG, THIRD 

Illustrated. $1.30 net. 

Tom Strong, Junior’s son helps his father build the first rail- 
road in the United States and then goes with Kit Carson on 
the Lewis and Clarke Expedition. 


HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS NEW YORK 


standard cyclopedias for young or olo 


CHAMPLIN’S 

Young Folks’ Cyclopaedias 

By JOHN D. CHAMPLIN 

Late Associate Editor of the American Cyclopedia. 

Bound in substantial red buckram. Each volume complete 
in itself and sold separately. i2mo, $3.00 per volume, net. 

COMMON THINGS 

New, Enlarged Edition, 850 pp. Profusely Illustrated 

“A book which will be of permanent value to any boy or gfirl to 
whom it may be given, and which fills a place in the juvenile library, 
never, so far as I know, supplied before. "-~Susan Coolidge * 

PERSONS AND PLACES 

New, Up-to-Date Edition, 985 pp. Over 375 Illustrations 

44 We know copies of the work to which their young owners turn 
instantly for information upon every theme about which they have 
questions to ask. More than this, we know that some of these copies 
are read daily, as well as consulted; that their owners turn the leaves 
as they might those of a fairy book, reading intently articles of which 
they had not thought before seeing them, and treating the book simply 
as one capable of furnishing the rarest entertainment in exhaustless 
quantities, ’'—AT. Y. Evening Post . 

LITERATURE AND ART 

604 pp. 270 Illustra tions 

“Few poems, plays, novels, pictures, statues, or fictitious characters 
that children— or most of their parents — of our day are likely to inquire 
about will be missed here. Mr. Champlin’s judgment seems unusually 
sound.” — The Nation . 

GAMES AND SPORTS 

By John D. Champlin and Arthur Bostwick 

Revised Edition, 784 pp. 900 Illustrations 

44 Should form a part of every juvenile library, whether public OC 
private.” — The Independent. 

NATURAL HISTORY 

By John D, Champlin, assisted by Frederick A. Lucas 
725 pp. Over 800 Illustrations 

“Here, in compact and attractive form, is valuable and reliable In- 
toimation on every phase cf natural history, on every item of interest 
to the student. Invaluable to the teacher and school, and should be on 
every teacher’s desk for ready reference, and the children should be 
iaught to go to this volume for information useful and interesting.”— 
Tournal of Edncation. 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 

NEW YORK CHICAGO 


THE HOME BOOK OF VERSE FOR 
YOUNG FOLKS 


Compiled by Burton E. Stevenson, Editor of 
“The Home Book of Verse/' 

With cover , and illustrations in color and black and vshite by 
WILLY POGANY. Over 500 pages, large i2mo. $2.25 net . 

Not a rambling, hap-hazard collection but a vade-mecum 
for youth from the ages of six or seven to sixteen or seven- 
teen. It opens with Nursery Rhymes and lullabies, pro- 
gresses through child rhymes and jingles to more mature 
nonsense verse; then come fairy verses and Christmas 
poems ; then nature verse and favorite rhymed stories ; then 
through the trumpet and drum period (where an attempt 
is made to teach true patriotism) to the final appeal of 
“Life Lessons” and “A Garland of Gold” (the great 
poems for all ages). 

This arrangement secures sequence of sentiment and a 
sort of cumulative appeal. Nearly all the children’s 
classics are included, and along with them a body of verse 
not so well known but almost equally deserving. There 
are many real “finds,” most of which have never before 
appeared in any anthology. 

Mr. Stevenson has banished doleful and pessimistic 
verse, and has dwelt on hope, courage, cheerfulness and 
helpfulness. The book should serve, too, as an introduc- 
tion to the greater poems, informing taste for them and 
appreciation of them, against the time when the boy or 
girl, grown into youth and maiden, is ready to swim out 
into the full current of English poetry. 


HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK 






































































































































































































































































































































• » 






























































^‘* 55 ® 3 p 

IV i>»>(S\1, 


• > • f 

l-t *■■*> 


. .. . — w* * 


;k 1 


X;-. 

« - - . » 


ii dr*!* Sr « • 

itwa, ucraSSS§|H}r>i : 

, V -.. • : 

3 fiaBmraa$ .' 4 ? 

\ x • •, "*.*v » i V’S* V’ ’ * ' X* ' *\ 

>.s. itii * 1 '■■' ■- i '"‘ i •*?''' 
fe$Sssi £fg fer . & ; 
1 : V boon • : A Hr ; % ) • • 


.»-• • - 


m 




;• » • «*- •* 
* « *» f . .. .. 

* > * fV* . 


■ l <'^yr ,‘ii J r^iV\“l3J' v H • 


F ' •'* V » - 

: / ... 

;v.v.r-;% 


k »•» •• ••*»*. <V # \ s. » « t - » + < 


••-•'• t* ' » • • *• f * « * .4 I 

« •• 4 > . v * •• ♦. > . */ > • -• • • - . .• *->. r ♦ • ► - ♦ «%*4 .. . . V ' 

• • * * f% aft J» V* ^ \ i .*••• • 


• i ' * % fc t V 

* •• ♦ r - - • 


* « *-r * 


>•;,••> -v f 


■ . »•>'%• v * ^ • . , .-i. 

*'••'•- >■"»••«•,. i '• • » ■ % * • a 

• •;•••■• >•••<<• 


• • ■ r » i - » . • .-•••< - • • I •• ♦, •-*••>••■• i •.►•» « .1 -v . . — 

. S ■ . V 

.* ■ • • rr v > » • ■ ‘ ■ »>• > • v-» ••■••*/ • ••• »• .,••* • i • •>»• . . 

**•••» I * 1 , ► * * » « •••'«*»•> • • * » • ' I * *» 


■* • • v * *- •• ».* ■. 

• - - • . * s , , 

’ I * » ■• •» ^ ‘ V v . »• » 

v’u r\- * 

k r • w * ► ‘ , \. *, - « 4 7 k 

• • • \ . f \ . 

•V • • • * * *• #W *- % w 


. ...• -.W- ... 


; • ♦' ' i x.;» % A-% v' 

»•’ * . * CSTi^ , 4 

i - » • •• w ... 

;v’.' 


' > > . 
--» ■*■ « >.* «-•• K . .» ' 

■ - > -v r *» 1 . w . 


■ V t ..... I 
• > t V » ■» ., . 

. ... . « * . 



' VtLi'r “* v f' 

fr. * • 


* » v *■ t, • * • 


« i * 

* - . ... ~ 


- 

■. • - ^ • . • * »*• • • • • 


' * % *• ^ . . .. vm%.- . • » % » - . » . > * * •% . . - 


i >»• * I a . « i i ■ . > f .- ‘ V 

♦ * > * * f ■ *” • ■ *.*„ !.»»»..-• • 

I . . t t k •■>,. i ......... . . 

I «•-• % -A * w .1 » •• • . •• • » S 

.*■% ' i « i i . . ■ • *. * * . - 


























